Bustin’ Loose defines my philosophy on what it takes to break free from the old restrictive way of doing things, such as a business that needs to break free from the hassles that operating a website can bring.

While any website can be of some value, a properly designed WordPress based site can offer things that a plane jane, old fashioned .html site cannot. There are many services out there for these “easy” sites, and yes, they are “cheap”, but, you get what you pay for, or, at least you should. With a modern, Web 2.0, dynamic database driven site, that uses a custom .css stylesheet, that makes adding new pages easy, you no longer have to pay a web designer to add each page for you, it is as simple as sending an email, just type, add images, select a category, and hit publish and it is done. A dynamic site also allows for interaction with your sites visitors, they may leave a comment about your products or services, which will encourage later site visitors to do business with you. If you sell products, you can also add this feature to your site and have a new source of sales as well that way, and, with WordPress, you may be able to use a simple plugin, and not even need an expensive shopping cart.

I could go on and on about the benefits of using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS), but, the biggest, and best reasons are in it’s simplicity, affordability, and design, it just works better! Most plugins and themes are free, though donations are encouraged to help further development, and since WordPress is an active Open Source community, the future technologies are sure to be built in.

If you are a small business owner, you need a modern, customizable web-presence that can grow with your business, a Web Designer  and Host that is there for you, and will help you reach your goals, take a look at us, we are on your side and will help you Break Free!

All of these plugins included in every installation package, at no extra cost. I feel that these are the most important, but are optional, if you don’t want them, I won’t install them. For you “Do It Yourselfers” just follow the link and download it, there are instructions there as well.

Akismet
This plugin is a definate must have, so much so, that it is included automatically with the WordPress download, I don’t even have to install it, just activate it and put in the API, which comes from WordPress.com.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Plugin Central
Believe me, when you have a lot of plugins, you will love this one! Follow the link to see what it does.

All in One SEO Pack
This Plugin Optimizes your WordPress site for the Search Engines.

SEO Friendly Images
SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which
automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes.
If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly
Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this
makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your
WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as
well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap
is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap
protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified
about the update.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade
This is one of my favorites and saves me tons of time!

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the
wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org
using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

WordPress.com Stats
This one also requires an API key from WordPress.com, no, not the same one from Akismet. I happen to be a Stats freak, the more the merrier!

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics
about your visitors. However I found that even though something like
Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be
overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me
as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to
focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and
provide them in a clear and concise interface.

StatPress
I love this plugin, although I don’t think anyone is maintaining it anymore, that is too bad, as fast as WordPress gets upgraded, eventually it may no longer work, and I have heard that there are some conflicts with other plugins, but until it is no good, I include it!

The real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about
blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search
keywords, feeds, browsers etc.

WP Super Cache
This plugin is will help your site run a little bit faster, but can be a pain in the butt when doing and modifications or changes to yur content, when I have changes to make, I deactivate this one!

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress
blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that
file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive
WordPress PHP scripts.

cformsII – Contact Form
I include this one because of all of the contact form plugins, this is the most customizable and works great, it is the one used on this site.

cforms is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder
plugin, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments
to multi form management, you can even have multiple forms on the same
page!

WP – UserOnline
I like this one too, more statistics! I have had a conflict or two using the sidebar widget with this one, but I still include it.

Detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).

TinyMCE Advanced
If you should ever need to put a table in a post or page, you will be glad I installed this one! The table on the Services and Fees page was created using this.

This plugin adds 15 plugins to TinyMCE:
Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions
(Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search
and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras.

NextGEN Gallery
This is a wonderful plugin for those that use a lot of images, and some other plugins require it, so, I include it just in case.

My Page Order
This is another of my favorites, it has come in handy many times, it is used on this site as well.

My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method
of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.

Reveal IDs for WP Admin
This is also a very useful, and in some cases neccesary, plugin, when using the Revolution themes, it is a must!

With WordPress 2.5 being released, the IDs on all admin pages have been
removed as it is. Propably due to the fact that the common user dont
need them. However, for advanced WordPress Users/ developers those IDs
were quite interesting for some plugins or template tags.

Insights
Another useful plugin, if you like tools, this is like an extra screwdriver!

Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time quality of your posts.

TagThePress
This plugin makes tagging easy!

With this plugin, you will be able to use the the Web service tagthe.net for your posts. Just click on Fetch tags and the title, content and optional excerpt of your post will be analyzed by tagthe.net in order to find words that could be useful as tags.

Different Posts Per Page
Depending on the theme you use and how you set it up, and how long your posts are, this is one of the best plugins I use, it keeps you from having  mile long pages!

“Different Posts Per Page” plugin will allow you to modify the number
of posts shown in home, category, archive or search page. You can even
set the order of posts by ascending or descending order.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
This is probably my favorite plugin of all, it make navigating the Admin area of WordPress incredibly fast and easy, I just hope it sticks around after WordPress goes to 2.7. I have installed 2.7 on a test site, and sorry, I don’t like the sidebar in the Admin area! Anyway, this is a great plugin!

The lazy and the productive will love it : all admin links available in
a neat CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then
“Pages” to edit pages, go to any admin page from any admin page.

CommentLuv
This is another plugin that you may or may not want. It works well with the NoFollow Free plugin, so I include them both. Some say that these plugins are bad for SEO, because when someone posts a comment on your site, it could link back to a site with a lower Google PageRank (PR), sorry, I don’t buy it, I look to give people an extra reason to get involved and post on my sites, if I get SPAM, I delete it! Both may not work on WP 2.7 due to the way that comments are handled.

Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to
their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the
comment author by visiting their site and looking for their feed while
they type their comment and appends it once they submit.

NoFollow Free
This WordPress plugin remove the “nofollow” attribute from your
wordpress blog’s comments (precisely from the author’s links) and/or
from the comments text links and it inserts (if you want) an image band
at the top of your pages with the phrase: “NOFOLLOW FRE” to encourage
your users to submit comments.
The last release includes new options to replace the nofollow only when
the author posted X comments before and put back the nofollow when some
blacklisted words are matched. The replacement of the nofollow is also
based on the users type (registered and visitor users). Every option
cna be customized by the options page “NOFF”.

(May not work on WP 2.7 due to the way that comments are handled.)

There could be other options available, if you find something else you want or that you believe works better, let me know, post a comment below and tell me what your favorite plugins are!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!

I know, you get bombarded with all sorts of ads wanting to sell you the “Best” virus protection on the market! I do too, but, what is the best? That is easy, one that works!

I know, every new computer comes with some sort of FREE antivirus program installed or available on a disk, but is it any good? What is the difference, both Norton and McCaffee, and the others, cost about the same, which is better? Well, either one is better than nothing, but there are better ones out there. I have heard so many of my “Computer Geek” buddies profess that the best is from CA or Computer Associates, however, after purchasing it, there were some sort of conflicts with my firewall, which I also recommend, and other AdWare/MalWare protection that I use, none of which would I want to do without, so, I didn’t use it!

I live in the sticks, so my choices of ISP’s, Internet Service Providers, is limited to either Dial-Up or Sattellite, so I have both! Along with my Internet Service, WildBlue gave me a FREE year of F-Secure, ok, I had a few months left on my Norton, so I waited until that ran out and then installed the F-Secure. Had I known then, what I know now, I would have done it immediately! Trust me, I got three viruses in 6 months!

After installing the F-Secure, I now know why! Just surfing the web, my f-Secure has protected me dozens of times, from real threats, not those fake ones you see!

Since I build and also host websites, I get a lot of eMail, mostly junk, and about 100 times a week, full of Viruses or Worms or some other bad thing, and F-Secure cleans it all up, before it gets to my computer! Just make sure you turn on all the features, like web scanning, it will blow your mind at what kind of stuff tries to attack you! Granted, I am online pretty much 24/7 and working a big portion of that, I love building websites so its ok.

I am sure that you have picked up on the Anti Virus Protection I believe in, F-Secure, not only does it work, it is updated every few minutes! Yeah, every few minutes it checks for updates, if available it installs them, all automatically, I am busy enough so I really like that! Yes, it costs a few bucks more, but it IS worth it! How many computers do you have? You can install F-Secure on up to three computers, that will save you some cash there! So, if you have a subscription that is about to expire, give F-Secure a shot, you will not be disappointed, I know I haven’t been!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!