ThePublicRecord.ca uses the following software and services to power this site, this list isn’t extensive, and much of the equipment serves specialized use cases for our coverage.
Editor Joey Coleman is always happy to provide suggestions to independent journalists who are looking at their own equipment needs. Email editor@thepublicrecord.ca to contact Joey. (Note: none of the links are affiliate links)

  • Web Hosting & Email: VPS instance with Opalstack with server in Toronto.
  • Audio Editing: Audacity on Linux, Audacity and Audition on Windows. (Primarily Audition, planning to learn Reaper in the near future)
  • Audio Recording Device Portable: TASCAM DR-40 with wind shield, and Sennheiser PXC 480 noise cancelling headphones. (Purchased from Dr. Disc Hamilton)  Note: sound cancelling headphones also used in studio for radio show, and in office for audio editing
  • Audio Mixing Board: Zoom Livetrak L-8
  • Audio Microphones: 2x Sennheiser E835 Handheld microphones, 2x EW100 G3 wireless transmitter lapel microphones, 1x plug-on transmitter for microphone. (Purchased one microphone, and one lapel set from Dr. Disc, Purchased one mic, one lapel set, and XLR transmitter from Vistek as part of their starter package deal)
  • Audiograms: Audiograms (video with audio waves) posted using WNYC’s open source Audiogram software, available on GitHub.
  • Content Management Software: Self-hosted WordPress
  • Coding Editors: Sublime Text 3
  • Computers
    • Desktop: 2015 Intel Xeon operating Windows 10, purchased refurbished from GreenByte
    • Laptops: 1) Surface Pro 4 2) 2011 Lenovo X220 Intel i5 running Windows 10 purchased refurbished from GreenByte   3) 2007 year IBM Thinkpad T61 running Linux Mint (high rez screen, used when I need distraction free writting)
  • Image Editor (Windows): Irfanview – one of my favourite image cropping, conversion, and editing software applications. I’ve been using this free (for non-commercial use) application since 1997 and the lack of a Linux Version is my #1 reason for maintaining a Windows machine at my office.
  • Graphic Editing Suite: Adobe full subscription.
  • Newsletter Distribution: Mailchimp
  • Patron Payments Processing: Gravity Forms & Stripe, setup as detailed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.
  • SSL Certificate: Let’s Encrypt
  • Still Photography Camera: Nikon D3400
  • Still Photograhpy Lenses: AF-P 18-55mm VR & AF-P 70-300mm
  • Still Photography Processing: RawTherapee on Linux machines, Adobe Lightroom on Windows machines.
  • RSS Reader: Tiny Tiny RSS, self-hosted on our Opalstack hosting. We used Feedly as a paid service prior to self-hosting and recommend
  • Video Camera:  Sony HXR-NX70U NXCAM AVCHD Camcorder (No longer sold)
  • Video Conversation Hardware: Teradek Cube 250 (No longer sold)
  • Video Editing: Day-to-day editing done using Open Source Software Shotcut, and Adobe Premier Pro.
  • Video Live Software: Wirecast Pro (Note: not yet upgraded to latest version, using Wirecast 6)
  • WordPress Theme: Modification of Chicago Reporter Theme as a child of Largo Framework, which is an open source project of the Institute for Non-Profit News.
  • WordPress Plugins:
    • Edit Flow: Used to categorize the status of drafts and pending posts.
    • JP Markdown: A plugin to allow me to write posts in Markdown language in the WordPress backend.
    • LiveBlog: for liveblog posting.
    • MailChimp: powers the sidebar widget for newsletter sign-up.
    • Navis Slideshows: Part of the Largo theme, powers photo slides in stories.
    • News Quiz Shortcode: Creates and publishes our end-of-week news quizzes
    • Podlove: Powers and organizes our podcast of The Public Record Radio Show
    • Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin: For those times we make a mistake in a headline, change the headline and URL. Much easier than creating a redirect in .htaccess. We advise only using for redirecting on recent content, as permanent redirects may be needed for older “evergreen content”.
    • Regenerate Thumbnails: With over 1000 images in our database, changes to our default dimensions for new devices and platforms would mean a lot of work if not for this plug-in which regenerates thumbnails after changes.
    • Super Cool Ad Inserter Plugin: Plugin from INN that inserts our newsletter signup box at the end of articles, and that is used to insert notices of upcoming events into the centre of our stories.
    • Term Debt Consolidator: Plugin from INN to find and merge similar tags.
    • NOTE: I no longer use Akismet Anti-Spam to protect reader privacy. I manually blacklist problem IPs.