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It’s been a while since many of you have heard from me, and that’s because there have been many important changes in my life recently. But I have been working in my studio again and as a result, I now have new works to share with you. Therefore, I have added sixteen new paintings to my website’s portfolio galleries. There is one new painting in my Oils portfolio gallery and the rest of my new works can be found filling up the entire first page of my Pastels portfolio gallery. Many of these paintings reflect my continued exploration of the dynamics of light and shadow. I hope you enjoy the paintings that flow from this inspiration.
“Rocks,” 16 x 12 pastel Original painting and giclee prints available from the artist.
I have also marked a few paintings as sold. While these original works are no longer available, you can still obtain a fine art giclée print. Just contact me so we can discuss the details.
I also have more new paintings on the easel. Preparing for a show requires a lot of new works, and I will be the featured artist at Art & Soul gallery in Ashland, Oregon in October 2021. Keep an eye open for the official announcement later this year!
Ashland is thriving with wonderful artwork created by our amazing artists! As fall begins, we invite you to see what our member businesses and artists are up to. Some are even offering creative workshops!
Don’t forget to visit each of their websites either. For a complete list, please visit our website at ashlandgalleries.com and download our 2020 Ashland Gallery Guide.
October Spotlight Exhibits
Ashland Art Works
Ashland Art Works in October!
Ashland Art Works is very pleased to announce that they will host artist demonstrations over the weekends in October! They also host a pop-up sale for their resident Clayfolk members this year. The annual Clayfolk Pottery Show was cancelled this year, but several of their members are hosting their own pop-up sales throughout the region.
Part II of our all-female artists exhibit opens October 2, 2020. No First Friday Art Walk is planned, but stay tuned!
We continue our diverse showing with one of a kind necklaces and earrings from local and California artists. We have added a rare group of antique Moroccan Wedding and dowry pieces. These tie to a group of vintage Afghani wedding attire, put together by Zahara. Unfortunately, she will not be able to share her middle eastern dances at Gallerie Karon at this time due to COVID restraints, but hopefully in the future.
Pegi Smith’s new allegorical mixed media paintings greet you as you walk through the front door.
Nancy Bardos has added an homage to Freya Stark, the very early female explorer. It’s a strong mixed media presentation on metal.
Jerri Cook shares two of her porcelain plaque portraits, a prominent actor from the movie Selma and beautiful rendition of Tony Morrison.
We are retaining our regular days and hours at the gallery.
We are open 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and closed Sunday and Monday.
Schneider Museum of Art Migrating Bodies: For(saking) Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Co-curated by Jill Hartz, former executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Richard Herskowitz, artistic and executive director of the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF), and Scott Malbaurn, director of the Schneider Museum of Art.
Humans have always been on the move. From nomads to nation builders, we have sought a better life, however we’ve chosen to define that goal. The causes of migration and displacement– including climate change and its attendant famines, fires, and 500-year floods that are now happening yearly; war; religious persecution; slavery; and commerce– seem unending and are, if anything, growing more dire.
Studio A.B is the gallery and workspace for artists Ann DiSalvo and Bruce Allen Bayard. Ann works in dry media: charcoal, pastel, graphite. Bruce creates photo-based, digital collage. We always have artwork on exhibit. Additionally, we offer the following services: Illustration, Editing, Photoshop, Graphic Design, Tutoring (drawing and Photoshop).
“Elevation” – First artwork of three as you walk Bandersnatch trail Artist: Cheryl Garcia Ashland Public Art series
Introducing the artist
Cheryl Garcia has loved art ever since she could pick up a crayon. I will describe her artistic journey after I introduce her Ashland public artwork entitled “Elevation.”
Creation of Elevation
The “Watershed Art Group” (originally Stef Seffinger, Pam Marsh, Sue Springer and a few others) wanted to place public art along the Bandersnatch trail above Lithia Park. Their goal was to bring attention to the importance of the Ashland Creek watershed, where we source our drinking water. Three sculptures have now been placed along the trail: Elevation, Pacific Fisher and Water is Life. They received funding primarily from the Haines & Friends art fund.
When you walk the Bandersnatch trail, the first of the three sculptures you will see (just before the trail starts) is Elevation by Cheryl Garcia. Cheryl is a metal artist, and Elevation is made of steel. Her initial concept for Elevation included a poem by Edward Abbey with three small birds flying above it.
Cheryl Garcia’s original concept drawing for Elevation. (photo by Cheryl Garcia)
Over time, the design became three large birds representing the “elevation” you experience as you walk up Bandersnatch trail, as well as a hope for elevation in our spirits through art and nature.
Elevation, with a view of trail continuing to the right of the sculpture. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
My question: What brought you to metal art?
I asked Cheryl how she came to love metal art. She replied: “It goes back to my love of junky old iron as a kid. My grandfather was a collector of artifacts. I loved going into his garage and digging around in all of his artifacts and playing around with tools. I loved going around collecting rusty old iron in the canyons of southwest Colorado where I grew up. I fell in love with the material first.”
As a child, Cheryl entered many local art contests, whether it was a coloring contest or who could draw a scene from Mesa Verde National Park the best.
“I won quite a few art contest prizes as a kid, including a year’s supply of free fountain sodas from a local convenience store.”
Cheryl Garcia
She laughed as she told me, “I was a popular kid,” and then “I think they didn’t do that [contest] any more after I won it, because I was down there every single day getting my free sodas with my friends.”
After a couple years off from school, when she worked drawing illustrations for archeological digs in the Four Corners area, she took every art class at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. During trips to Santa Fe, she was inspired by the large scale metal art sculptures there. Since welding was not offered at Fort Lewis College, she switched to a vocational school and became a certified welder in 1993. That opened the door to metal working and metal art.
Love at first sight
When she lived in Missoula, Montana for a year to enjoy the music scene there and work as a welder, she met her husband Criss. It was a case of “love at first sight” – not the sappy movie kind, but the lasting real-life, through the ups and downs to this day kind.
It was through Criss that they decided to move to Ashland in November 1996. “It was just what we were looking for.” Her first Southern Oregon job at Medford Fabrication enabled her to save enough money to purchase her own metal work and welding equipment.
“Living my dream”
Cheryl Garcia in 1998. (photo by Criss Garcia)
Now that she owned her own equipment, Cheryl said goodbye to the 9-to-5 in order to “live my dream.” She began by making garden ornaments that she sold at the Growers and Crafters Markets in Ashland and Jacksonville.
Garden ornaments Cheryl sold at Growers Markets in 1998. (photo by Criss Garcia)
People who bought her garden ornaments started asking her to make gates and handrails for them. She found out that making structural art required a contractor’s license. Dedicated to growing both her skills and her business, she went to Rogue Community College and got the license. Since then, she has made many bright-colored nature-inspired sculptures both large and small, gates, fences, vessels, sacred art and more.
She is especially proud of a large spiral staircase she built for a private customer, a project that required her to draw upon all of her skills and creativity.
Spiral staircase by Cheryl Garcia in a private residence. (photo by Cheryl Garcia)
Public art
Though she accepts many private commissions, Cheryl especially enjoys creating public art: “I certainly enjoy the public commissions the most, because they’re reaching a bigger audience. I know the joy and wonder I am trying to put out in the world is affecting more lives than just a private commission.”
Cheryl is a visible artist in Southern Oregon. If you have been to Jacksonville in the past few years, you may have seen her huge poppy flowers in the vineyard just outside of town. (photo by Peter Finkle)
If you drive by Walker School on Walker Street in Ashland, you may have seen her large flowers on the school grounds.
Sunflower by Cheryl Garcia at Walker School. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
If you have been to Britt Music Festival in the past few years, you have walked by her huge flower sculpture at the Britt entrance.
Cheryl Garcia poses with her Brittillaria sculpture at the Britt Festival grounds. It is named for the fritillaria flower.
(photo by Rita Ashley)
Elevation: the artistic process
Cheryl Garcia at work in her studio. (photo by Jim Craven)
Now let’s look in detail at the piece called Elevation, which was installed near the beginning of the Bandersnatch trail. Elevation began with a Corten steel plate, a stainless steel plate, steel posts, more steel plates for the base, nuts, bolts, paints and more. Corten steel is a quick-rusting steel often used for outdoor installations. The different pieces were each cut out and worked on individually before they could be put together.
This 4-minute video shows an overview of the entire process of creating Elevation. https://www.youtube.com/embed/0uJyhCveXoY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
To complement the video, here is my summary of the steps involved, illustrated with photographs taken from the video. First, the heart of Elevation is the Corten steel plate. Cheryl drew a complex design on the steel, then cut precise holes in the steel with a plasma cutting tool.
tPlasma cutting tool at rest.
Second are the rigid side-poles that support the Corten steel plate and anchor it to the base.
Third is the steel base, which in this case required two large pieces of steel with bolts anchoring it both to the sculpture above and to the concrete foundation below. In most of her jobs, Cheryl makes the concrete foundation as well as the metal sculpture. “That’s why part of my contractor’s license is certification in concrete work as well,” she said. In this case, the Parks Department was responsible for the concrete foundation.
Steel base for Elevation, showing the mounting bolts. (photo from the Cheryl Garcia video)
Fourth, the three birds were cut out of stainless steel. The steel had to be ground, sanded and buffed until it was smooth to the touch, without sharp edges.
Stainless steel birds being painted. (photo from the Cheryl Garcia video)
After each individual part was done, she finally put it all together. The birds were welded to the Corten steel plate from the back side. After they were attached, everything was masked off in order to apply anodized, long lasting industrial paint for the blue color of the birds.
Corten steel of Elevation before the rusting process. (photo from the Cheryl Garcia video)
Finally, the rusting process is a key part of the artwork that we see but don’t normally think about. Cheryl painted a chemical solution on the Corten steel, which is made to rust quickly. She said, “It [the Corten steel] takes a chemical solution I can put on. The rusting itself takes some finessing as well; I don’t want it to go too far, and I don’t want it to be too little. So I need to use the right amount of chemical solution to get the perfect rust and then neutralize it with a neutralizer, then rinse it all down before the installation.”
There is so much that people don’t see, including “a lot of grinding” that goes into every piece of artwork. Cheryl summed up, “It is very labor intensive.”
Detail of Elevation showing the Corten steel on site after the rusting process. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
Installation and Dedication
Elevation was installed at the site in June of 2018. The dedication ceremony didn’t happen until September 2018. As it turned out, the dedication for both Elevation and Water is Life (also on Bandersnatch trail) were held on the same day.
Ribbon cutting for Elevation.
Where to find Elevation
My wife and I first walked the Bandersnatch trail to see the three public art sculptures there in July 2020. Just above Lithia Park, the Bandersnatch trail is one of the easiest Ashland trails to access. It begins not far from the swimming hole on Ashland Creek. If you are driving or biking, take Granite Street south to the swimming hole, then turn left on Glenview Drive. After 2/10 of a mile, you’ll see a parking area on the right that can accommodate about eight cars, followed by a larger parking area on the left. If you are in a car, park here.
Sign near the parking area on Glenview Drive pointing the way to Bandersnatch trail. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
Near the parking area is this sign that says, “Waterline Trail >” and “To Bandersnatch Trail 820′.” Keep an eye out for mountain bikers zooming by in this section of the trail because this section is a multi-use trail. When you reach the Bandersnatch trail, it will be only for pedestrians and equestrians.
You’ll know you are heading the right way if you pass this gate and sign.
Next clue that you are heading in the right direction to see Bandersnatch trail artworks. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
You will reach the Elevation sculpture about 1/10 of a mile from the parking lot, while you are still on the Waterline trail.
Next to the Elevation sculpture, you will see this sign.
Continue up to the Bandersnatch trail if you want to see the other two sculptures on this art walk: Pacific Fisher and Water is Life. Continue to keep an eye out for mountain bikers until you reach Bandersnatch trail. Built in 2012, Bandersnatch trail is 1.7 miles long and intersects multiple trails, so you can hike in a loop or just go straight up and back.
Not far past Elevation is the official beginning of the Bandersnatch trail, where you will find the other two works of public art. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
What is a Bandersnatch?
You may be wondering, as I did, “What is a bandersnatch?” It is found in the unusual world of “Alice in Wonderland.” Here is how it is described.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Lewis Carroll, from the poem Jabberwocky in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
Cantrall Buckley County Park
Because I am writing about Cheryl Garcia’s artwork, I want to briefly introduce you to the sculptures being installed at 88-acre Cantrall Buckley county park, located along the Applegate River near Ruch. The park and community have collaborated to raise funds for what has become an Art Walk at the park.
The art in the park began with concrete and mosaic artwork Applegate Valley artist Jeremy Criswell created for the playground at the park.
Tortoise mosaic and concrete sculpture by Jeremy Criswell, located in the children’s playground at Cantrall Buckley County Park. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
Jeremy is the sculptor of the Ashland public art piece on the Bandersnatch trail called “Pacific Fisher.”
He introduced community members to Cheryl Garcia, which resulted in a plan for Cheryl to create eleven metal art pieces that embody local flora and fauna in the Applegate Valley. She has completed eight so far as of August 2020, with three more to go.
Mock Orange by Cheryl Garcia, at Cantrall Buckley County Park. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
The community group A Greater Applegate wrote: “Art enthusiasts are delighted to see the numerous sculptures in the Educational Sculpture Art Walk series installed near the river. Cheryl Garcia, our very talented Jacksonville artist, completed the first awe-inspiring metal rendition, “The Mock Orange,” in the Fall of 2018. This spectacular 12-foot sculpture depicts the large and beautiful white blossom of this tender but tough native species.”
Cheryl enthusiastically described the project to me, and said, “It will become Southern Oregon’s first sculpture park!”
If you would like to learn more about Cheryl’s work, her website is GreatMetalWorks.com.
Northern Flicker by Cheryl Garcia, at Cantrall Buckley County Park. (photo by Peter Finkle, 2020)
Ashland Public Art map
A map at the link below shows City of Ashland public art, from the city website. Photos of the art are by Graham Lewis. https://gis.ashland.or.us/publicart/
References:
Anon. “Ashland Public Art Collection: A map tour of Public Art installations in the City of Ashland, Oregon,” City of Ashland website.
https://gis.ashland.or.us/publicart/
A Greater Applegate, http://agreaterapplegate.org/cantrall-buckley-park/
Anon. “Cantrall Buckley Sculpture Park Takes Shape, Jacksonville Review Online, June 5, 2018. https://jacksonvillereview.com/cantrall-buckley-sculpture-park-takes-shape/
Garcia, Cheryl. Interview and personal communications, August 2020.
Seffinger, Stef. Interview and personal communications, August 2020.
Author: Peter Finkle
My name is Peter Finkle. I moved to Ashland in 1991. My email is walkashland-at-ashlandhome.net. I am a Husband, Father, Poet, Writer and Herbal Health Researcher. View all posts by Peter Finkle
Many thanks to artist Katherine Bird of Grants Pass for permission to use this image of her painting from the 2019 Angels show.
2020 Angels Show CALL TO ARTISTS!
It’s that time again! Time to find your angel art or create something new and submit it in response to the Southern Oregon Artists Resource 8th annual 2020 Angels Show call to artists. Here’s the application form with rules and procedures that you can download and complete, then submit with your angel art at the gallery. Please include titles, dimensions and medium for each piece.
We don’t ask for traditional representations of angels, though they are welcome. What we’re looking for is unique artistic interpretations of angels. We have seen some amazing interpretations over the years and look forward to seeing yours!
We are grateful that once again Art Presence Art Center will host the Angels Show, but this year we’re changing things up a little. First, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not plan to have a reception. However, the gallery will produce a virtual tour video that we will post widely across our websites and social networks. Second, to keep the works on display to the level that the gallery’s patrons have come to expect, the show is now juried. And third, due to space limitations at the gallery and our mutual desire to display every artist’s art without crowding, each artist will have a maximum of two pieces accepted. There is also a size limit of 48″ in any direction. Sorry, but we have to say this: All angels must be your own original artwork. No giclees, please! As always, all angels must remain on display until the show ends.
Here’s how to submit your angels for jurying and a timeline of important phases between now and the show’s opening:
Include a summary of information about your art with titles, dimensions and medium for each piece.
Bring your angel art to the gallery with your form and summary on November 23, 24 or 25. Be sure to wear your mask and be prepared to observe social distancing measures while in the gallery. Hand sanitizer is available at the front desk.
Jurying takes place the week following Thanksgiving. Artists are then notified of the status of their work’s acceptance.
Pick up artwork that is not accepted at the gallery on December 4, 5 or 6.
We hang the angels on the back wall of the gallery on December 2.
The show opens Friday, December 4 and continues through Sunday, December 27.
Pick up unsold angels on Monday, December 28.
All angel art must be for sale, and Art Presence realizes 35% of sales. There is no additional fee for submitting your art or participation in the show.
**IMPORTANT! Please note that the gallery is observing mandatory masking and social distancing guidelines. When you come to the gallery to drop off and pick up artwork, you must wear a mask and observe physical distancing of at least 6 feet. Artists manning the gallery are keeping everything clean and safe, and hand sanitizer is available at the front counter.
We are so excited to see the angels that this year’s artists submit! In light of the difficulties this year has presented for all of us, angels are just the thing to wrap up the year. We hope you find comfort and inspiration in creating your angels for this year’s show. Let’s make this the best angels show yet! Thank you so much for answering the 2020 Angels Show Call to Artists!
I am SO HAPPY to announce the launch of a new custom e-commerce website, https://DriFlower.com! The site went live on Saturday, August 1 after starting work on June 3. Many grateful thanks to DriFlower founder and CEO Jay Larkins for the opportunity! Kudos to Marketing Director Jon Griffin for a productive working partnership on the site design and content.
This little company’s equipment, poised to revolutionize the hemp and cannabis industry, maximizes the efficiency of crop harvest and drying. It’s disruptive technology at its finest – new harvesting tools with simple design and function, yet so effective. The idea is to reduce the time, effort and cost of harvest while ensuring minimal contact with the crop itself from harvest until it’s dry and ready to trim. This preserves the medicinal value of the produce while cutting costs for the producer, a win-win prospect for any business. Furthermore, the integrity of the company’s founder is matched only by the quality and durability of the harvesting equipment. Offerings include:
Complete kits that a home grower can use individually and that small to medium size operations can use in quantity to maximize the use of their dry space.
Components for growers who want to design their own system.
Custom installations for large growing operations (contact them for more info about this).
We designed these latter features to grow overtime. Moreover, the online shop will also feature new products as time goes on. I hope you will visit the website to see it for yourself. The overall design is very understated and handsome, with warm greys throughout. In addition, we included accent colors of lovely purple, bamboo and green (of course). Lastly, if you’re a grower, you should contact them about incorporating DriFlower into your operation today!!
I hope I have the opportunity to create more websites for this industry. Building this one was fun and challenging.
Some of my favorite web hosting services are having sales right now!
Happy 15th Birthday, HostGator!
If you are a new customer, HostGator hosting will discount your hosting for the first term to a fabulous $3.95/month (paid annually) to celebrate their 15th birthday!! Please be sure to select the longest term possible to maximize your savings. Then, make a note on your calendar to reduce your term to one year so it won’t renew for more than one year at the regular price.
Hostgator updated their customer portal in September, so if you’ve used them before but didn’t stay, please consider giving them another try., Their servers are so fast and their customer support gets great reviews. In addition, Ebates users can get an amazing $30 rebate on their purchase! I have a couple of clients who host their websites at HostGator and they are very happy customers. Here are a couple of additional offers, good through the end of 2017:
Bluehost, a very reputable host with fast servers, is having a special where their new customer discount starts at an incredible $2.95 for plans that only include one website! I’m not sure how long you can extend these savings for, but anyone with one site should think hard about taking advantage of this huge savings! Another plus is that they have free SSL certificates available. this can be a huge savings!
Bluehost just had its 14th birthday in July, and they have updated their signup flow, improved their knowledge base, and streamlined their account user interface. Their support crew is great and their service gets great reviews from my clients who are hosted with them. Bonus: Ebates users can get a $10 rebate on their purchase!
GreenGeeks Upgraded their Hosting Platform!
We love Green Geeks for their lightning-fast servers (other hosts charge much more for accounts hosted on SSD servers!) and great customer support. The fact that they offset their carbon emmissions with 300% renewable energy doesn’t hurt either! Their new customer price of $3.95/month is available for up to 3 years if you pay for them up front. It’s just a hair more than one year at the regular price, so if green hosting matters to you, don’t thnk twice. Their shared hosting space is roomy and you can host as many domains there as you like for no additional fee. This crew is well established, yet still up and coming through the ranks of web hosts, impelled by their great service and customer satisfaction. Their FREE CPanel-to-CPanel free migration service is hassle-free, and others like Bluehost charge up to $150 for the same service, so if you already have a site that’s hosted elsewhere, these folks are a great place to transfer to.
I am humbled and very grateful to have received this lovely testimonial from Jannie Ledard.
I have recently asked Hannah to update and redesign my website. I was indecisive about choosing a style that would speak to me. Hannah made it very easy. She patiently explained the different approaches. Being an artist herself, she knew how to choose the perfect words to express my vision. When I posted my new website on FB, I received endless written and oral compliments!
I highly recommend Hannah for her artistic taste and great professionalism!
It was a joy creating a new website for Jannie’s beautiful glass art. I hope you will take a moment to visit it and see her work and mine: https://www.jannieledardglassart.com/
Hannah West Design is now secured with a brand new SSL certificate! On January 14, we migrated www.hannahwestdesign.com to a new hosting service. This is NameCheap hosting, which we want to try out on behalf of our starving artist clients to find out if hosting service compares well to other hosts who don’t have the same affordable pricing.
In addition, Google is now promoting sites that are protected with SSL encryption and demoting those without it by placing an “Unsecured Site” flag (similar to the “This site might be hacked” flag we sometimes see) next to any website which does not have SSL. This is part of a widespread movement to encrypt the web (Learn more at Let’sEncrypt.org). With that in mind, we decided to make the switch to SSL encryption at the same time. As a result, our updated address is https://www.hannahwestdesign.com. We’re proud of that beautiful green padlock displaying in the address bar now!
What is SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. A correctly installed SSL certificate encrypts all information transmitted to and from your website. This protects your private information when visiting the site, from which pages you visit to sharing to submitting contact forms to purchasing online. Websites with contact forms, login pages, online shops, etc. can all benefit from the added security provided by this encryption. Visitors will feel more secure interacting with your site, which is a huge bonus. Importantly, each certificate comes with a guarantee, so if a malicious entity subjects you to liability for damage to a visitor, you will receive a settlement form the certificate issuer. This amount varies with the level of certificate used, but starts at $10,000.
There was a time when conventional wisdom said that applying SSL to an entire website would make its pages load more slowly. However, recent advice from numerous experts in the field now assures us that the opposite is now true. And we are seeing our website load with a bit more spring in its step today…the ultimate proof.
Implementing SSL
The process of implementing SSL can be simple and painless, but it can also be rather harrowing. For me it was somewhere in between those extremes. I have been through this before on client sites as well. While some need extra attention for various reasons, most of the time it’s complete—including all the content tweaks needed for that lovely green padlock to display—in 2–4 hours.
To increase your standing with the search engines, additional tasks are necessary. Once the SSL is in place, we need to make adjustments in Google Webmaster Tools so they can direct traffic to the secure version of your site. We also need to adjust your Google Analytics account so traffic stats will continue to be collected accurately.
Pricing and Other Requirements
Many things related to SSL certificates have changed in the last couple of years. For one thing, they used to be very expensive. While prices for certificates to protect sites that don’t involve e-commerce have become quite affordable, there are now free certificates available from Let’s Encrypt. The catch is that not all hosts have a quick and easy way to install them and the process of doing it manually can take a good deal of time. Furthermore, some hosts—like Ipower—refuse to allow third-party certificates to be installed on their servers. While we could have used Cloudflare on our site, we opted for a Comodo Positive SSL certificate, which NameCheap offers for only $1.99 the first year. Renewals are a very reasonable $9.00/year with discounts for advance purchase up to three years. That’s a big discount from the same certificate on Ipower ($31.99) and Bluehost’s for $4.17/month. What’s the catch? You have to have your website hosted with NameCheap too. Also very inexpensive, so definitely worth considering.
Previously you had to have a dedicated IP address (the numerical equivalent of your web address) for an SSL certificate. This meant you had to have private hosting (expensive) or pay a monthly fee of $4.99-6.99 PER MONTH to have a dedicated IP added to your otherwise reasonably-priced shared hosting. Because unique IP addresses have become more and more rare, this prerequisite has been lifted by many certificate issuers and hosts. Instead, they tie the certificate identity to the domain instead of the server IP. All this has made SSL encryption more affordable to the average website owner. The benefits are greater now too.
Benefits of SSL Encryption
Some hosts provide free SSL certificates, but most do not. These free certificates may have downsides you’d rather not deal with. We found that Bluehost’s free SSL, issued by Comodo, only covers the root domain (https://your-domain.com) and NOT the www version. Big problem for sites installed with www.your-domain.com addresses. We can avoid this with the use of Cloudflare. Though it’s a completely different setup, their free certificate will cover both the bare domain and the www version. Entry-level SSL certificates have become much more affordable than they once were, too.
I’m ready to begin helping others to make this important change as well. I’ve learned the ins and outs of what is possible and what is not on several hosts. I can inform you of your options and advise you on which is the best choice for the money.
If you’re not sure you even want to deal with this undertaking or not, please consider the benefits:
Receive payments through your ecommerce website – Most payment gateways now require SSL, even PayPal
Give your visitors greater confidence in the security of their transactions, interactions with your site, and personal information
Limit liability for identity theft
Boost page load times
Greater protection from hackers
Prevent unknown people snooping on activity to and from your website
Boost your SEO
Participate in the movement to encrypt the entire web
Are you ready to apply SSL to your own website and enjoy these benefits? Please contact me!
DNS (Domain Name Server) provider Dyn.com is currently under heavy DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) which has affected many well known brands across the Internet including Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, Paypal and many others.
This morning one of my clients wrote to tell me her site was down. Fortunately it came back up fairly quickly and is fine now. However, the widespread DDoS attack which is currently underway may affect your site if you use dyn.com for DNS or if you use any service, like Paypal, that uses DynDNS.
The larger providers seem to have worked quite quickly to mitigate this attack, but it is ongoing so it’s important that you’re aware of it and carefully monitor your website during this time.
While it is a priority to protect every website I create with reasonable security measures, when there is an attack on your domain name provider there is little we can do but check in with your domain name registrar and ask them to estimate how long it will be before they can bring their service—and therefore, your own website—back online. Please contact me if you are having trouble with your website today.
More Information
Security provider Wordfence has posted on their blog with more information about this type of attack HERE.
