Visiting Vermont Favorite Sites

Welcome to Visiting Vermont's list of our favorite sites. There's no particular order to the list, many links are to webmaster resources we've found useful, some are to companies that have given us good service and many links go to sites about our hobbies - BBQ - cooking - traveling - more BBQ - hot wings

We're happy to swap links with suitable sites. Since we're all trying to improve our search engine ranking, we all need to make sure we link to quality sites. And for the search engines to take everyone's links seriously, there has to be some logical connection in the content of each site. If you're site looks like a good match, please email our webmaster with your site's info.

If you find a link in our exchange that shouldn't be there, please email our webmaster.

Our Friends On The Web

Webmaster Resources We've Found Useful

Web Hosting

We've built over 125 web sites since 1997, and we've found good web hosts, mediocre web hosts and a couple of hosting companies that were nightmares. We have our own dedicated servers these days to host our web sites but people are always asking us to recommend a good - but inexpensive! - web host.

www.Hosting-Reviewed.com led us to the web site hosting companies that we like. They regularly update the hosts they promote and almost always have links to hosting plans for any budget.

Before we got our servers, we used www.own-a-domain.com's hosting. Only one of our sites ever outgrew their 'Economy Plan' - 5GB space, 250GB transfer per month, 500 email addresses, 10 MySQL databases, free scripts for blogging, forums, photo galleries and lots more stuff than we can remember - for $3.99 per month. They've got bigger plans, you can compare all of Own-a-Domain's hosting plans here.

A couple of our other favorite web hosts include:

www.FaithPages.com -- they offer free web hosting for Christian web sites and churches.

www.HostingAnswer.com -- they can direct you to web hosts with plans for any size site - most hosts they link to guarantee 99.9% uptime.

CuttingEdgeHosting.com -- lives up to their name. They'll set you up with the latest & greatest servers and programs.

 

Domains

Our favorite place to register domain names (we've registered over 500 names....) is www.Own-a-Domain.com. Domain name registration is just $7.85 per year for .com, .net & .org names. They have most of the other extensions available as well. You get a lot with your domain name - free email, a free starter web site you can build with their online wizard in just a few minutes or they'll let you forward your domain name to an existing site.

The .ws (for Web Site) extension for domain names is the next big thing. If you have a web site with a .com name, you should think about buying the same name with the .ws extension before someone else gets it. www.BuyWS.com helped us register a bunch of .ws domain names inexpensively.

SmartDomainParking.com. Their PPC domain parking has some of the highest click thru rates and conversion rates. Ad revenue payout is among the best in the domain parking industry.

Web Design Tools

www.Build-Your-Website.com has a collection of webmaster tools and web page templates.

www.CheckBackSoon.com has a collection of free and shareware web tools and turnkey web site scripts including dating site scripts & auction site scripts.

EasyPHPEditor.com is an easy to use WYSIWYG PHP editing program. We use PHP for almost all of our ecommerce sites and sites we do for small businesses.

Create-a-Banner
Create your own ad banners online in seconds with this free online wizard. Select your background from over 125 ad banner images, type in your title & text - you can even chose the color & font.  Then just click a button & download your banner. It really is that quick. And free. We think free is a good thing.

FreeHitsTracker.com offers free
web site statistics scripts and free hit counters for your web site to let you keep track of your site's visitors and unique visitors.

FreewarePicks.com has lots of neat freeware and shareware software to download. We've had great luck with the free Zone Alarm firewall, the Firefox browser and our antispam program works best with the free Thunderbird email program.

Clipart

The Clipart Site
These guys have lots & lots & lots of free clipart and photos. They claim to have
25,000 free images - that's probably true. We've used some of their Christian clipart for several sites, a couple dog clips from their animal clipart (The Wife used some cat images, too. I just don't want to admit knowing a cat person). When friends impose on us to design business cards or letter head (free, of course!) we grab something from their, business clipart or an American flag. They've also collected a huge number of public domain photos including National Parks, military aircraft, NASA photos and Navy Ships & Subs

Choice Clipart is another great clipart site. They're more of a directory than a free image site, but the link to thousands of clipart sites of all kinds. They have a good directory for Christian clipart and a long list of reasonably priced (including royalty-free!) stock photos.

 
 
Sites From Some of Our Friends

Understanding Mortgages
The free information about mortgages & refinancing at www.UnderstandingMortgages.com was a big help when we bought our house. We used their mortgage glossary a lot.  Their articles about the different types of mortgages helped and we played with the free mortgage amortization calculator all the time to see what we could afford.

www.IanClark.com
Web site for Ian Clark, stock photography.

www.LeeClark.com
News, editorial photography and freelance photo editing.

Discount Notary
Our friend found himself a great niche -- discounted supplies for notary publics - supplies for all 50 states.

MediDietResources.com
Get practical advice about the Mediterranean diet - the world's only diet that has proven successful over generations. Live well while eating well.

Mediterranean Diet Enterprises presents medical facts & fiction about dieting - from real doctors. Recipes & nutritional information are supplied by clinical nutrition professionals.

And, there's all the Italian food you can eat!

The Joke Factory has the funniest free jokes and cartoons on the net. Updated daily to keep you in stitches all the time.
http://www.thejokefactory.com

Pocket Declaration
Free reminders about when to fly the flag and other interesting patriotic info by e-mail. Remember the days you need your flag up. CongressUSA.com
Is a good source of information on US politics and government. Register to vote or request an absentee ballot. Another great political web site is www.VoteInfo.com. They track how your representative vote on all of the important issues so you can be an informed voter. They'll also help you register to vote, support online voting or request an absentee ballot. Conservatives will like www.LiberalWatch.net that tracks the most outrageous, whacko & far-out statements & actions of political liberals.

We love to get away to Vermont whenever we can. Visiting Vermont ha s a whimsical
take on Vermont vacations from a Vermonter's point of view.

If you're traveling in Colorado or New Mexico, visit www.ChimneyRockColorado.com for Chimney Rock Visitors Information. They have a complete visitor's guide to Chimney Rock Archaeological Area and National Historic Site and the surrounding areas.

Save on your income taxes - legally. TaxDefense.org will help you identify all of your legal exemptions - and stand behind you if you are audited by the IRS.