New Moon Risings

Once again it is time for us to say thank you to all Helikas clients for enabling donations to be made to the charities we love. We chose to donate in the following manner:

• The bulk of the donations were accepted by a local no-kill shelter that is only just beginning operation. With such a challenge ahead of them, we hope that our donation will go far and we look forward to providing support to such a worthy cause in the future.
• Adoption of a mustang named Ghost Dancer who resides peacefully at Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary after acquiring a bullet in her hip during the time she ran wild in Nevada.
• Renewed sponsorship of The Witches Voice

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t say it enough. It is your hosting subscriptions make all this possible.

The holiday weekend pushed back the release of this month issue of Activ8, but it’s up, it’s ready and as always it’s interesting.

The Pagan Environmental Survey is one every self-professed nature loving pagan should take not so much for the person conducting the survey, but for your own betterment.  Answer honestly and you’ll get more out of his survey than he will.

In The Sustainable Path, our new article this month, Rob Barton explains why buying for your health and comfort actually has an environmental effect.  Buy smart and you, your family and the environment will be better off for it.

Since I raved about the quality and flavor of grass fed beef last month, I included a link to an online retailer for folks who may not have organic farms or ranches near them.  Really, give it a try, the difference is stunning.  A few other links made it in to the Food & Beverage section, I need to start grabbing a snack before I create A8.

With renewal time pending for so many Helikas clients, we have decided to institute a new price lock policy.

The price you pay when you sign up for a new hosting account with Helikas is the price you will always pay.  If you upgrade an existing account to a larger package, when the time comes to renew, the annual fee will be the fee listed on the day of upgrade regardless of any increase in prices that may have occurred. Simple as that.

Should annual fees fall instead of rise, of course we will adjust all clients annual renewal fees to the lower price.

Many thanks to everyone who supported us starting out, without you we never could have supported so many worthy charities.

Most larger websites or ecommerce sites have dedicated IP addresses, meaning that their site is the only one on the internet using that unique IP number. For example, if you typed 209.131.36.158 into your web browsers address bar you would be taken to Yahoo! This is their dedicated IP address and no one elses. 209.131.36.158 is the unique address on the web that has been attached to the domain name yahoo.com.

If you have a business oriented website then you probably will need a dedicated IP address for your site, especially if you have a merchant account and accept credit card payments through your site. You can’t even get an SSL certificate for your website until you have a dedicated IP address. You can get around this by using a PayPal shopping cart or something else hosted off your site but most people don’t like the idea of sending the customer to a new address to close the deal.

SEO or search engine optimizations is also a consideration. Many people have found that sites with a dedicated IP address do mysteriously better in the search engine results than those utilizing shared IPs. Often times security concerns drive people to upgrade their hosting account to include a dedicated IP address.

Both shared and dedicated IPs can be useful depending on what kind of website you own. The key is to do some research and find out which one is right for you. Rumors are circulating that eventually we will run out of unique IPs under the current system and a new address or IP system will be necessary. Even today, most hosting companies charge a premium if you want to upgrade to a dedicated IP.