2016: The Year in Review & New Features

Even though the year is coming to a close it's been a busy last few weeks here at SiteHost. On top of the usual end of year jobs we've managed to release a couple of new features - but before we get to those I would like to reflect on 2016.

2016 - A Summary

While this year may not go down in the history books for favourable reasons, it was a good year for SiteHost. Our growth continues, we made good progress in both infrastructure and product, plus we revamped our branding and website.

Infrastructure wise, we made some big improvements in key areas that will allow us to continue to grow and improve our services. We did this while keeping our network uptime above 99.99%, the average response time to support tickets under an hour and maintained a 95% positive customer feedback rating.

On the product side of things, thousands of commits were bundled into 43 production releases this year. The highlight though has to be releasing Cloud Containers, a product we are super excited about and you all seem to be too.

Which brings us to our final two feature releases for the year – Windows Server 2016 and custom image support for Cloud Containers.

Custom Cloud Container Images

When we launched Cloud Containers we included a mix of image types that covered many of the common uses cases to get you up and running fast. This clearly worked as there are now over two thousand containers online, with more added every day. Now we're ready for the next step, using custom images to allow the platform to run even more environments.

Using a custom Dockerfile you can create your own images. You control which packages are installed, what services are running and how you want them configured. We even built the version control, build pipeline and Docker registry for these images right into the control panel. So while you'll still need some technical knowledge, we're taking care of a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

There's plenty more to read in the knowledge base, but we can't wait to see what types of containers you create with these new tools and we hope that you'll find Cloud Containers even more flexible than before!

Windows Server 2016

Our team has been hard at work getting Windows Server 2016 ready and we're pleased to say that it is now available for automatic provisioning through the control panel.

This latest OS from Microsoft integrates much of the new core from Windows 10 and includes IIS 10 (with support for HTTP/2), native support for Docker and Windows containers, PowerShell 5.1 plus a raft of other improvements.

As this is a relatively new release from Microsoft we do advise caution when deploying in production – make sure you're testing your application fully to ensure everything is compatible and performs well. If you need help, or a bit of best practice advice, our engineering team are only a support ticket away.

Wrap Up

That's pretty much a wrap on 2016 for SiteHost. A few of us will still be working away throughout the holidays, but many of the team are taking a well deserved break.

Lastly, thank you for all your support, we hope you have a fantastic holiday break and we'll be in touch in the New Year!