I have read this article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc646023.aspx but when it was written there wasn't a Windows 7 operating system yet. In a Windows 7 operating environment the only way to open a specific port, is by going into Control Panel > Advanced Settings, and then selecting actions from the menu bar, and making a New Rule. From there you are required to specify whether or not it is an 'inbound' rule or an 'outbound' rule; which is where I'm stuck. The TechNet article doesn't talk about this, presumably because Windows 7 was not released yet.
Can someone please lead me in the right direction? :) I just want to open the ports associated with SQL Server and its many faceted ranks.