Top 10 things we accomplished in 2015

I post an annual Top 10 list of our accomplishments for the year. You can check out previous posts for 2014, 2013 and 2012…

Here’s my list for 2015.

Retired Windows 2003
Microsoft announced a while back that Windows 2003 support was ending on July 14, 2015. We launched our hosting services back in 2003 with its foundation on the newly released Windows 2003 – so we had a lot of customers on the O/S and we also had some of our back end infrastructure on Windows 2003 as well. We didn’t want to wait until the last minute to try to deprecate Windows 2003 servers so we actually started working on customer migrations two years ago! We started helping with voluntary migrations and then switched over to migrating sites manually one by one…about 6000 sites. We finally finished up early July, right on schedule. Ray gives the inside scoop on how we retired Windows 2003 – it’s a good ‘behind-the-scene’ read.
Launched Website Cloud Backup solution
A great example of a hybrid hosting service, we launched a solution to help automate off-site website and MySQL database backups where the files/data are stored on the Amazon cloud. The service includes an intuitive web-based portal to manage backup scheduling, versioning and restorations. And the backup solution starts at $1.75/mo. More information on Website Cloud Backup here.
Enhanced Website Cloud Backup with automated MS SQL backup
One of the things the original Website Cloud Backup solution lacked was a solution for backing up MS SQL databases. Automated SQL backup has been a big ‘ask’ from customers for many years, so we enhanced the solution to back up SQL 2012 and SQL 2014 databases. (And fear not, we are working on SQL 2008 backups which should be coming just around the corner! Stay tuned for announcements.) As a bonus, we also slipped in Blacklist Monitoring. This is where we continually monitor Google and should your site ever become blacklisted due to hacking activities, we’ll immediately suspend the backup schedule so that Website Cloud Backup doesn’t continue to backup your compromised website files and databases. With the Blacklist Monitoring feature, customers should be able to get to their clean backups more easily and not have to wade through useless backup copies. More information on Website Cloud Backup here.
Launched ASP.NET 4.5.2 hosting
Keeping up to date with new ASP.NET versions is becoming more important as Microsoft announced that they will only support the last two minor versions. So we updated both our Windows 2008 and Windows 2012 hosting platform with ASP.NET 4.5.2.
Launched Shared and Managed TFS 2015
Microsoft launched TFS 2015 so we launched both Shared and Managed TFS 2015 hosting in both the US and UK datacenter locations. The newest version of Team Foundation Server finally allows the renaming of team projects. Other enhancements include the ability to display bugs in the task board and quick code editing through the web portal. More info on TFS Hosting here.
We migrated our Data Center location
We needed more breathing room in our data center, so we moved locations within our USA-based data center to a larger space. This was no trivial task. It took a lot of planning and we moved hundreds of servers.
Enhanced the control panel with a PHP version chooser
For our hosting services we do focus on ASP.NET hosting but we also realize that many .NET developers use PHP applications, such as WordPress. To strengthen our PHP hosting service, we introduced a PHP version chooser that works similar to our ASP.NET version chooser tool.
Expanded SiteLock services with Trueshield CDN and Web Application Firewall
We launched a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service through our partner, SiteLock. This service will cache customer content (both static and dynamic depending on the plan) in edge servers located in over 25 data centers around the world and also includes features like content minification and image compression. The CDN service increases the website speed as visitors can pull content off servers closer to their location. The enhancement also includes a Web Application Firewall service to help prevent hack attempts and exploits, especially targeting popular open source apps like WordPress, DNN or nopCommerce. Because millions of websites use the SiteLock service, they “see” the signatures of common hacking attempts so they can stop such activities dead in its track before the malicious traffic hits your site on our servers.
Launched Managed SQL solutions at Everleap
Yes, this item is a feature that is not at our DiscountASP.NET brand, but I include it here as an example of an upgrade path for customers that need larger SQL storage, or customized SQL database solutions, or customers needing many smaller SQL databases for a SaaS application. We cannot accommodate such SQL requirements at DiscountASP.NET but with Managed SQL hosting at our cloud hosting brand, Everleap, we provide a solution for special SQL needs. Here is more information on Managed SQL hosting at Everleap.com.
Renewed our Microsoft Gold Partner status
We successfully renewed our Microsoft Gold Partner status for the 10th year. I know, I know, I keep mentioning this every year. But it is a big deal because it’s getting harder to maintain every year and it’s an investment on our part that many other hosting providers are no longer keeping up with.