There were several new sites that now grace the hard drive of hostastick. This month has been one site after another.

First was http://fcitycommunications.com/ for Chad Davies. Chad is a Rockford area network installer. He installs phone systems, wiring, security cameras and configures routers.

Next was a site for a funeral home. Yes, funeral homes need websites. Finch was pleased to be able to include slide shows with the obituaries that the owner easily updates himself. Please visit http://finchfuneral.com/ to see the result.

Ticketbattle.com is finally ready for the public. This has been a difficult site because of complex new penny auction software that drives the pages. Please visit this site at http://ticketbattle.com/

And finally Shelter Care Ministries is on the way to getting done. Preview this new version of http://shelter-care.org at http://medmancreative.com/shelter-care/

Here is a little radio station that my brother Amzad and I started in 2006. If you enjoy ONIYOM on a regular basis, please consider supporting us on a regular basis as well. As always, if you simply can’t afford to send us support, we understand.

We’re happy to be able to provide you with our classic Bengali music streams even if times are tough.

Enjoy the stream now or visit the site http://oniyom.com

Rodger Bliss needs your continued support to help pay for this server. In the past Rodger has used far less expensive shared reseller hosting servers. All of my customers were sharing one IP address with 100′s of unknown sites and this had become a problem that was simply getting worse. Hostastick is a dedicated server.

A dedicated server comes at a much higher price and now I actually charge a monthly fee to host websites. Your cost is a small fraction of what the server costs me per month. Hostastick has now actually payed for itself. 

Support me with a hosting account.

My dedicated server has provided the sites with a higher level of security, speed, and up time. You will have the capability to go far beyond the resource limitations found in a shared hosting environment. Security is a top priority of hostastick. I am requiring passwords that are rated 100% secure.

My company TEKSEA has been developing custom programs for the Internet since 1996. TEKSEA provides software development services that deliver robust, scalable, and cost-effective software solutions. http://teksea.com

Check out our new TEKSEA webinar that was developed by Amzad

I have decided to go away from using only flash to create this site. WordPress has been the Content Management System I have been using to create sites with lately. I thought I would begin by blogging about the plug-ins I use on this site. Here are ten I use on this site.

1. Akismet. Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. It comes with WordPress so every WordPress has at least this type of protection against spam.
2. All in One SEO Pack. Out-of-the-box Search Engine Optimization for your WordPress blog. It gets easier to take suggestions from Google Analytics and bring them to your pages. A must for anyone who wants their site found.
3. Contact Form 7. Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. I have used this to program all kinds of forms as well. It does not allow for custom programming, but most forms do not require it.
4. Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. This make the process automatic.
5. Simple Google Analytics. A simple Plugin to add Analytics code on your pages. You simply enter your ID, you choose if you are on a sub-domain and add your domain name. You must also maintain the google analyitics
6. NextGEN Gallery. A NextGENeration Photo Gallery for WordPress. I used this to make the painting area of this site. It is just about default so you can see what it may do for your site.
7. WP e-Commerce. A plugin that provides a WordPress Shopping Cart. Easiest way to set up a store online yet. I have been looking for something this easy for 10 years while making e-Commerce sites with so much complexity and problems.
8. WP Super Cache. Very fast caching plugin for WordPress. This makes pages load faster. This plug-in should be a default plug-in like Akismet.
9. Zopim Widget. Zopim embeds a chatbar on your website, so that any visitor can chat with you directly by clicking on the chatbar. Again I am using the free version of this plug-in as well. This is a great plug-in to say the least.
10. Kimili Flash Embed. Provides a full WordPress interface for SWFObject – the best way to embed Flash on your site. Every flash movie can have alternative content that shows up for mobile devices.

These plug-ins are all free to use, but please donate to all of them if you can. WordPress is an Open Source project where thousands of people dedicate time and effort to make this Content Management System for anyone to use.