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2017 : The Year in Review

Happy New Year everyone! Twenty years, wow.

I am just sitting here reflecting on 2017 listening to Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky". For some reason, Pink Floyd never seems to fail in setting the mood.

It was a crazy year in many regards, but then again, we are the Hales, and we are in the website / media business after all, so it's somewhat expected.

Building a new Mobile Cattle Management System, our transformation of AgMarketOnline into AgSearch.us, Server Security upgrades and a Solar Eclipse dominated the headlines for our most recently completed trip around the sun.

The year began with a few quirks and by March we felt the server wasn't performing the best.

Prior to May of 2017 we had our website business running on a server that was built in 2008.  We felt it was time for a new server so we upgraded to a machine that has a processor that is twice as fast and has 4x as much RAM (memory). We also doubled our hard drive (storage capacity) and our server company has all of our websites and data backed up 5 times daily, as opposed to once a week before.

In August we realized the need to upgrade our DNS or Domain Name Server, so that upgrade took place as well.

Shortly thereafter, Andi began exploring a security upgrade to all our website contact forms that recently became a requirement on our new, more secure servers.  She was able to upgrade several of our clients before the end of the year, but still has some remaining. The cost for each secure form was going to be $50 per month each! However, we found a way to cost-share it out so that it only runs $25 per year for each secure form on the website.

In November we decided to offer full 256 bit encryption SSL certificates for $99 per year (installed). Having an SSL certificate installed on your domain makes your site more secure and shows the https or padlock on some browsers.

We've been in business for 20 years now and we are looking forward to continuing to serve our friends and clients this coming year!


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