I can’t help but say that in the old Muppets way of saying ‘Pigs in Space’!
What you might ask is Beads In Space all about?
Beads of Courage is a wonderful charity that supports children coping with serious illnesses.
Many glass beadmakers donate beads that are in turn given to children who add them to their strings to signify a particular stage in their journey. Perhaps they just finished a round of treatment, or had surgery.
Beads of Courage are going to be sending 8oz of beads into space on the next Space Shuttle!
Bead artists are encourage to submit three beads which will be juried and possibly chosen to take that trip into space. How exciting is that!!!
Here’s a link to the info – the deadline is looming – so be quick if you want to join in the fun.
Now, if you know some of the beads that I make you’ll realise that I have some very excited monkeys here in Ontario! Yesterday I mailed off three of them and now we have to wait and wonder. Regardless of who’s beads get picked one thing is for sure – it’s a win/win/win for the children, for Beads of Courage and for the artists!
I’m so excited to see the beads that are submitted for this – they have to be space themed and I’m imagining all kinds of colourful space vehicles and critters. I suspect there may be a few ‘Pigs IN Spaaaaaace’ too!
I have a new location for my Goddess beads that I’m excited about – SacredKiln.com . This is a Canadian based online Pagan shop and I hope my Goddess’ will be a good fit for them.
The owners are Kemi and Carline, here is what they have to say about their store -
We are a Canadian on-line metaphysical shop based in Ottawa, Ontario. Our mission is to provide quality spiritual and ritual items to Canadian pagans, Wiccans, and other earth-based alternative religions. You don’t have to be Pagan or Wiccan to shop with us…
The SacredKiln.com name came from a coven Kemi had years ago. The name brings together the five elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water as well as the human Spirit. All that comes from the Sacred Kiln is made of these sacred elements and are unique because of the interaction of the elements themselves.
SacredKiln carry a wide variety of Pagan items ranging from the most beautifully inticate Celtic Crosses -
Do you have a website or are you thinking about getting one?
You are probably aware that you need a company to ‘host’ the site for you. This means paying someone to store your files on their servers so that people can see your website.
In addition to hosting space you also need to register a domain name, and it often makes sense to register your domain name and pay for hosting in one place.
Sooo… if you are new to the world of websites/domains/hosting where do you start??
How do you decide which company will offer you the best value and service for money?
My advice to you is do your research!
Go to Google or your search engine of choice and type in hosting company+review or top ten hosting companies or something similar – you get the idea. What suits one person may not suit another.
I’ll discuss two Hosting Companies in this post, HostPapa and GoDaddy – similar names, very, very different products and company personas. I have experience with both and hope this will be informative and also give you an idea of what to look for when you’re shopping. And let me say right up front — I have a personal bias, but I’ll let you guess about that.
Let’s start with the front pages of their websites, after all, first impressions mean a lot, right?
HostPapa (they have both .com and .ca — I’m using .ca since I’m in Canada).
First things I see:
A fairly friendly looking site with a large animated header advertising their main service features
Girls — at the time of writing the post there’s Danica Patrick (racing star & official GoDaddy girl) and just below I see a link to a video that shows a girl about to receive a massage from another girl. Along with that are other links to GoDaddy videos, each one with various ‘GoDaddy Girls‘ and one proudly professing it’s been ‘Banned from the Superbowl! ‘. Am I really at a hosting site?
Domains selling from $1.99 and other domain sales info
No pricing on the hosting packages that I can easily see off the bat
Oh, and looks like they have a Huge Email Sale going on! . . . wait. . . what IS an email sale? Do emails cost extra at this provider??
Click for larger version
What do each of these companies really offer (at time of writing)?
HostPapa:
A hosting package with HostPapa includes a Domain name — yes you can register a domain name for free with HostPapa. It’s included in your hosting plan, no extra charge. Also, they allow unlimited domain names under your account. This means that if you have more than one domain you are using on the web they will all go into the one-price account (though you will have to pay for registering any extra domain after your first free domain)
$5.95/month? Well, in order to receive that rate you need to commit to and pay for three years of service — but they do have a 30 day money back guarantee.
If you only want to pay for one year up front it will cost you $7.95 a month — and yes, that still includes your free domain. $95.40/year for a hosting plan with unlimited server space, unlimited bandwidth and a free domain.
( Hey! — What about those emails that GoDaddy has a big sale on? )
At HostPapa all your emails are included in that price — you can make as many emails as you like for your domains and set how large you’d like their in-boxes to be.
In addition they offer the usual web building tools, and CPanel which is a common back end way to manage your website(s).
What about the ‘Green’ bit? Read this from their site, click here.
“We promote the development and use of wind and solar energy resources by purchasing green energy certificates to offset all the power we use in our data centres and offices.”
HostPapa Checklist:
Hosting space – unlimited
Bandwidth – unlimited
Domains – unlimited, one free
Emails – unlimited
User Management – CPanel
Other benefits – Green philosophy and practice (as much as possible)
1-888 phone number, 24/7 support
GoDaddy:
First, here’s a GoDaddy web commercial to get you in the mood (you can see many of these on their site, but this is a quickie from YouTube):
Is this how you want your hosting company to present itself?
OK, on to the rest of our service run-down review & comparison:
Looking over their website, it looks like GoDaddy offers many options to suit your needs –
Of course, many people do not need ‘unlimited web space & domains’, so let’s find an economy package, something with less features that will cost me less money. Let’s have a look:
Their Economy Plan costs $4.74 a month for 12 months up front. $56.88/yr, significantly less than HostPapa. OK, what do I get with this plan? Will it work for me?
10 GB Space | 300 GB Transfer
100 Email Accounts
More than adequate for most people with one or a few websites.
100 emails? Wow. What about that Email Sale? Does that mean I’ll get a discount?
To be honest, this is where things get confusing — here’s what it says about the Email Sale:
Perfect for individuals who want a fast, memorable, secure address.
Create a unique, memorable, personalized address based on your domain!
Huh? Can’t I do that already with their economy plan? If I have a domain and a CPanel back-end, I can create any email address I want right? Why do I need to purchase this at $1.07/month PER EMAIL ADDRESS (On SALE!) — would one address would add $12.84 to my yearly bill?
I know you’d like me to explain this further, but I can’t, because I’m getting a bit confused at this point. All I know is that with any previous hosting account I’ve had, I’ve used CPanel to create any email addresses I want. GoDaddy does not use CPanel — they have some proprietary (read: you can’t go there easily) back-end which limits what you can do and how you can do things.
I just tried to set up an email account in GoDaddy and the first thing I encountered was this message:
To apply a free Email credit, click on the “Use Credit” link for the account type you want to activate.
What’s an email credit? Why do I have to use a credit to create an email account? How many credits do I have? Is this part of the big Email Sale?
Are you confused yet? I am! How do I sort this out and get the information I need fairly quickly and easily?
I’ll use GoDaddy’s 24/7 customer support! What’s the number? 480-505-8877.
Yes, you got it, 480 — NOT 1-800 – GoDaddy.
They don’t have a 1-800 number. Every minute you spend on the phone with them comes out of your pocket.
GoDaddy offers a myriad of features and enhancements for your domain — a quick look at the user panel shows items such as:
Search Engine Visibility
Protected Registration
Domain Certification
Premium email (there’s that email thing again!)
All of which are add-ons to the basic package and cost more. Click here to see GoDaddy features — it’s a little overwhelming as most of these charts are, but this says that with a basic account you are allowed up to 100 email accounts and that your TOTAL email storage is 100mb. So if you set up 100 email accounts each one will be allowed 1mb of storage space.
If Aunt Betty sends you her holiday snapshots you could find that your email storage space has exceeded it’s maximum!! AHA!! So maybe that’s why I should go for the big Email Sale and purchase a premium address with more space!
GoDaddy Checklist:
Hosting space – 10GB but I can pay for more
Monthly Bandwidth – 300 GB but I can pay for more
Domains – Not clear, text says unlimited websites maybe hosted in one account but doesn’t mention unlimited domains for these sites
Emails — did we get that one figured out yet? 100 with 100mb space – but — YUP – I can pay for more!
User Management – Proprietary system
Other benefits — is it the GoDaddy Girls, maybe?
24/7 support no 800 number
From a purely personal point of view I have found GoDaddy’s user panel to be extremely confusing, at every step I seem to be offered add on features at discount prices. I attempted to change something within my account — a simple thing ‘set domain to auto renew‘ but I couldn’t to do so because of a conflicting setting which even the folks at GoDaddy tech support have been unable to change.
Anyway —
Next. GoDaddy is very good about letting their customers know about current sales and specials — you’ll receive many emails regarding these, possibly on a weekly basis.
To my mind, if you are a novice at the web (or even someone who’s done web stuff for a while), I think it would be extremely easy to end up paying extra for services you do not need, and these weekly/daily specials get a bit much — I have enough email to contend with. . . .
So, Which Hosting Company Should You Choose?
I’m not going to tell you which company to choose (or am I?), I don’t know your requirements, your personality or your budget. All I will say is Be Aware, and Be Wise. Do not get fooled or sucked into paying for a service that you don’t need, and, it’s always good to look for online reviews of a particular company before you make your final decision.
And a side note about one of HostPapa’s girls that comes up on the front page –
As you can see, she has a different persona compared to the GoDaddy Girls.
I guess it’s ye olde cliche, ‘different strokes for different folks. . .’
Oh, and I did find a video on YouTube for HostPapa — see below — It’s not glamourous, or sexy but it does have some real information about what HostPapa have to offer.
If you happen to decide to sign up with one of these two companies here are the links again -
Thanks to everyone who entered my latest Giveaway – I had fun, and I hope you did too!
I decided to use the random number generator for the winners – seems the fairest way to go. I made a list of all the names and jumbled them up so that folks with more than one entry were not clumped together.
So without further ado -
Winner of the First Prize is
#19 Meghann!!
And for the Booby Prize -
#12 – Karen H!
Congratulations to the winners!!! I’ve already notified them and have to say that Meghann was surprised as she did not realise I had entered her in the draw since she had actually helped create one of the prizes.
I decided that she was kind enough to Blog, Twitter, Plurk and Facebook to promote my giveaway that she should indeed be included in the draw. I’m delighted that she is a winner because Meghann strives to promote not only her own art but others as well, she’s a talented and very kind hearted person.
Karen? Well…. watch out Karen! This boozy little monkey is heading your way – hide your valuables! Lock up your car keys!
I will explain, he was an experiment – perfect bead he is not, but I think he’s crazy and fun enough to bring some smiles along his journey!
There is a blog full of wonderful projects, inspiration and jewellery of all types – it’s called Inspirational Beading, I urge you to check it out! It’s written by fellow Canadian and Etsyian Sages Cupboard who creates beautifully unique beaded jewellery.
I think my favourite is her swan necklace – isn’t it amazing!
I was thrilled when Sage’s Cupboard asked if she could feature my Goddess beads in her blog (click the link to see what we came up with!)
Here are some more items you’ll find in Sage’s Cupboard on Etsy!
I think January is my least favourite month of year, I’m doing my best to brighten it up a bit so today’s post is all about my latest giveaway. I will announce the winners in early February.
I will enter the names of ALL my Facebook fans who comment on this post into the draw AND all the NEW newsletter sign ups. If you are a fan and a new sign up to the newsletter you will get two entries!
If you would like to earn more chances at winning here are some things you can do (please email me with a link so that I know and can add extra entries for you) :
Blog about my giveaway with a link in your blog (total of 2 extra entries)
Mention my giveaway with a link on your Facebook page (total of 1 extra entry)
Tweet about my giveaway with a link (total of 1 extra entry)
Get a friend to become a fan of Fireseed, or sign up for my newsletter (1 extra entry per friend that fans and/or signs up)
Don’t forget to Email me with a link when you’ve done one or more of these, or I may not know about it!
At the end of January I will gather all the entries together and number them. I will then use a random number generator to decide a winner.
The Winner will receive their choice of one of the items below -
Your very own one of a kind Space Monkee! Haley Comet could be winging her way to your house!!
This beautiful bracelet was designed and made by my good friend Meghann Gervais of Little Studio Jewels. She has created it using my handmade beads, along with filled gold beads, filled gold chain and swarovski crystals. It truly is a stunning one of a kind piece! To see more of Meghann’s beautiful work you can visit her Etsy shop here.
Or perhaps you’d like a Goddess bead? This one comes on a silver plated ball chain, all ready to wear!
The Booby Prize Runner Up will receive this charming little monkey, he got into the booze over the holidays and is causing so much trouble around the house that he has to go
This weekend’s show at the Hellenic Centre in Ottawa is bearing down on me – I only have today and tomorrow to get everything together. I’m going from feelings of pure excitement to extreme terror! Everything will be fine but I’m at the stage where I’ve convinced myself I don’t have enough of this, or too much of that, and how will I handle this or that!
Yes, you got it, I’m feeling like a babbling fool!
How to handle pre-show jitters? Here’s what I’m doing -
Make lists! It’s so much easier when you can SEE what needs doing
Enlist help! Even if it’s just getting someone to run to the store or clean beads
Brainstorm – my husband and best friend have been a huge help in listening and adding to my ideas
Don’t overstretch yourself – this year I’ve narrowed my designs down to three specific groups, this should add more cohesion to my table and make it easier for shoppers to decide what they would like to purchase
BREATHE!! Oh yes, that helps get things done for sure!
It’s probably not unlike a wedding, or having a baby — if you are really organised you can have a list for – a month before the show, a week before the show, the day before. I’m sure each one will get easier but at the same time I know I’ll be nervous before hand.
So what am I taking?
My three groups are -
Monkees!
Goddess and Dream Beads
and Recreations of Ancient Beads
And here’s the show info in case you’ve missed it and wonder where and when it is -
