The past two days we’ve performed routine upgrades on the software firewall, MailScanner, and reset the Bayesian database after some complaints that MailScanner wasn’t catching quite as much spam as it used to. All software is now up to date across all servers and everything’s running swimmingly, with no catastrophes.

Speaking of catastrophes, Ike shifted a bit and is now no longer on a beeline for Austin, though this storm is so exceedingly big we will likely see a bit of it even as far inland as we are as it passes a few hundred miles to the east of us according to current projections (though some projections do have us still running right through the center of Austin, those projections are not the most likely). We do have a pretty large number of folks that live in Houston hosting here, and we’ll be keeping an eye on how big of a disaster this winds up being for the Gulf Coast.

As we did with Katrina, should the panicky storm of the century predictions of the national media not be hyperbole, and should the “leave now or you face imminent death” predictions of the weather service not wind up being overzealous anticipation, we will not suspend or terminate anyone’s hosting accounts in the affected areas should your card suddenly not go through or you miss a payment. We’ll figure you’re rebuilding your house or paying a motel fee so you have a roof over your head, and will give you time to contact us to let us know what’s going on, and what you need from us.

Communicate with us and let us know what you need from us, and we’ll work with you in whatever way we can.

We have some news to put in news, and some you’ll like, and some you won’t.

The good news: those people that like paying with PayPal but who are now getting gigged for the $1.50 fee for not having a card on file now have another option. Our billing system is now able to set up PayPal subscriptions for your hosting payments. Simply log in to your billing area, click to expand “Billing and Services” , click on “PayPal Subscriptions”, and then tick the services you want to set it up for. Email billing and let us know you set up the subscription, and we’ll take off the $1.50.

Currently you’ll need to update your card on file (should you need to) on the DrakNet site here. We’ve had to remove the ability to do it from within billing due to the appearance of fields that allow you to place a bank account on file - oddly enough, our billing software is not set up to take Echecks through our processor, authorize.net, even though it is set up to take credit cards. We’ve made a request for that to be added, and we’ll see what they say, so hopefully look for that within the next few months.

Our Billing prepayment discounts have changed! Annual discounts on standard accounts are now 15% due to the introduction of a new biennial (every 2 years) billing period. You can now order hosting as well as domain names in two year increments, and save 20%. If you’d like to switch, fill out the billing change form or let us know.

To thank you for reading our blather, we’re giving you a coupon! Through May 15, 2008, coupon code 3BZ6O8 will get you $25 off any new monthly billing installations on new or existing accounts! Give it out to your friends, use it yourself, and thanks!

This weekend, we’ve added almost 100 new tutorials to the support area. There are now visual demonstrations of how to change your DNS, how to transfer your domain registration, 47 Fantastico installation tutorials showing you how to install most of the programs offered there, as well as some basic Wordpress tutorials.

You can view the expanded support area located at http://www.drak.net/support/ .