Being a website owner for so many years, you're likely to pick up a few things along the way. For those of you who are looking for recommendations regarding various web-based services, below is my list, from start to finish. Please note that this page contains affiliate links and any purchases made help support this site (which costs appx. $200/month to maintain). Thank you.
WPEngine Super Fast WordPress Hosting
NBTÂ is hosted by WPEngine, a WordPress-specific, fully-managed service that is optimized for performance. A CDN works in tandem with their service, locally caching the site and speeding up load times across the globe.
Literally the most satisfied I have been with a host, ever. Uptime, performance and easy-of-use are key with these guys and I never have to pick up the phone and call them, because, well, I never have any issues.
ThemeForest has the best, in my opinion, selection of templates available on the web. I am a regular customer when I am looking to get NBT up to date and filled with the latest bells and whistles.
I've bought and used a fair share of code from CodeCanyon over the years to serve a number of different purposes on this site, from calendars to chart display plugins.
My email list distributor. As NBT got large and more and more people stopped by, I needed a 3rd party to manage the list. I went with AWeber due to their outstanding moral code when it comes to SPAM, thus good delivery stats and happy end users.
VigiLink is an affiliate network that NBT uses. We like their no nonsense platform and overall quantity of advertisers. If you're a publisher looking for one of the best networks available with thousands of advertisers, we have had very good luck working with this team.
I have hired a couple freelancers over the years because I'm certainly no James Bond when it comes to writing code or customization. ELance covers it all, though: programmers, designers, writers, marketers, you name it.
$5 bucks can get you a lot these days, and I've used Fiverr for more than a few times to get some tough tasks done not just on this site but other projects as well.
