Resources

General Information / Get Educated
Effective Web Design: User Experience Bootcamp: Website owners should read this and take it to heart.

Domain Names
NameCheap: Recommended over GoDaddy as the place to register your domain name, less noise & less nonsense.

Entry Level Hosting Providers
PairLite: Great for beginners and low traffic sites.
FusedNetwork: Canadian hosting provider with a solid entry service.
TigerTech: Lots of praise from WordPress users, good support.

Professional Level Hosting
StormOnDemand: Cloud hosted VPS’s, this is where you go when you want to get serious with your website – fully managed.
Linode: Another awesome VPS provider, however, these servers are manually managed by you.. some server admin skills required.
CloudFlare: Not hosting but a DNS provider (with lots of cool bells and whistles) – skip out on using your hosts name-servers and use this instead.

Useful Freelance Services
FreshBooks – online invoicing and collection made easy – awesome service.
Pancakeapp – like FreshBooks but self hosted and no monthly fee.
EchoSign – send legal contracts and other documents online for digital signatures – dump the fax!

Web Tools
Google WebFonts – use more fonts on your website (free)
Golden Ratio Typography Calculator – Helps tune your typography settings for your website.

WordPress
Gravity Forms – the best form builder plugin for WordPress period. Create contact forms or any other type of form you need
Scribe – anyone can create a site using solid SEO principals with this plugin.
WordPress SEO – cover all the basics with this top-notch free SEO plugin for WordPress.
W3TC Cache – create a screaming fast WordPress site by installing this cache plugin to dramatically speed up your site.. for free!
Genesis Theme – this is a great theme for those new to WordPress due to it’s great community, support and child themes.
Thesis Theme – another great theme for WordPress – huge community and a solid way to become more hands on with your site.