It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Alan Cohen

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Charles Dubois

What’s different?

I discovered, quite by accident, a great little plugin called Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress. What this plugin does is compliment Akismet so that when Akismet identifies a comment as spam, the commenter is asked to complete a simple CAPTCHA. If the commenter fails to complete the CAPTCHA, then the comment is trashed and doesn’t clutter up the spam queue. Now if the commenter passes the CAPTCHA, the comment will appear in the spam queue so that false-positives can then be identified much easier.

I must say, this plugin is gold! So of course I want to thank the author, Ray of Solaris, for creating this very useful plugin. Because of you I’m now going to open up comments to the public on another blog I own since this is a time-saving plugin that will make comment moderation that much simpler. Thanks Ray!

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

Click here to view the embedded video.

The most successful marketers out there are really aggressive. I mean you see their tweets and it’s go here, check out this, buy that, make money here, get traffic there…it’s endless. Supposedly it works, but it’s just not my style.

So how do I advertise, you might ask? Well, for starters, all of my blog posts and pages are usually optimized for the search engines, with a keyword in the title, and another one or 2 in the actual post. I have dominated certain search engines for a great niche for over 4 years because of that little trick, and because of top 10 placement in the search engines, I get a lot of free organic traffic.

The other thing I do is contribute to communities. This is my favorite thing to do because you can get a really big following if you prove to the community that you’re there to help and contribute, and not just there to spam your products, services, opportunities.

I also comment on other blogs, write articles, and I’ve been a guest blogger. All those things are passive marketing methods and they work for me. I may not get rich quickly like some aggressive marketers are, but I think I’ll get there eventually. Just call me a turtle.

“The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams. We would have more than one Einstein, Edison, Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, Dr. Salk and other great minds in a century.”

Sidney Madwed

Now, those of you who know me understand that I’m a big supporter of the open source communities such as the various web design ones I’ve been a member of for years, and of course the WordPress community. So supporting software such as the Gimp is a given for me.

However, I must confess when I first looked at the Gimp it seemed a little tricky even for me and I have lots of experience using many different kinds of graphics software. But I’m a very hands-on type of person and I have learned how to do some basic stuff with the Gimp, stuff that my preferred graphics editor, PhotoImpact, just doesn’t do.

So when I discovered that Craig had created a package of 26 video tutorials teaching every single aspect of how to use the Gimp, I was really excited. It seems I’m not the only one either. Look what people are saying:

I was pretty amazed by the simple methods which you will learn in this package.
Thanks a lot for this nice product!!!

After watching your step by step videos on your website it is easy to use and I am creating professional graphics and saving tons of money.

WOW!! what can I say – this is totally awesome and to say it blew me away is the understatement of the year…

“Master The Gimp” video tutorials is AWESOME! Excellent program!

For a mere $27, not only do you get all the instructional videos to master the Gimp, but Craig has thrown in a bunch of fantastic bonuses which are just too good to miss out on. He has really over-delivered and I’d have to say that purchasing this package is truly a no-brainer.

So if you want to save yourself a ton of money by creating your own killer graphics for your various projects, and you want to become a master Gimp user, get Design Graphics With Gimp. I think you’ll be as impressed as I am.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.

David Burns, Intimate Connections

Click here to view the embedded video.

So without further ado, here’s the list of plugins I use:

• µAudio Player
• AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button
• Akismet
• Angsuman’s Permanent Redirect
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
• Democracy
• Do Follow
• Easy Contact
• Exec-PHP
• FD Feedburner Plugin
• Flexi Pages Widget
• Flexo Archives
• Google XML Sitemaps
• NextGEN Gallery
  
• pageMash
• Platinum SEO Pack
• Secure WordPress
• Shutter Reloaded
• Twitter Tools
• Viper’s Video Quicktags
• WordPress Database Backup
• WP-RSSImport
• WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept
• WP eStore (Sell Digital Products)
• WP Page Numbers
• WP Super Cache

What WordPress plugins do you have installed that you can’t live without? I look forward to your comments.