Happy Holidays from the IvyCats

IvyCat has enjoyed a truly incredible year of growth, improvements, and a ton of fun. Who do we have to thank for all this awesomeness? You, that’s who! As we reflect on 2014, we are feeling so grateful to have you as part of our IvyCat family. Here are some of our highlights…

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Left to Right: AJ, Eric, Patrick, Anne and Laura

We’ve Grown

IvyCat has enjoyed unprecedented growth in 2014. For starters, we hired our new Senior Developer, Patrick Jackson, who worked with us for about a year before signing on as an official team member. We’re so happy to have him and are looking forward to a long and prosperous partnership.

Eric was invited to speak at this year’s WordCamp Seattle and his presentation, Migrating WordPress Sites, was extremely well-received. If you were not able to attend, no worries, you can walk through Eric’s informative tutorial on the blog.

IvyCat is also hosting a monthly South Sound WordPress Meetup. So, if you’re in the Seattle/South Sound area, we’d love to have you come and join us.

If you’re not in our local area but would still love to meet with and learn from the IvyCats, we’ve been offering free monthly “Office Hours” webinars to all of our readers. Topics can range from speeding up and securing your site to marketing and copywriting tips. The best way to stay informed on when these webinars will be taking place is to sign up for our monthly newsletter.

IvyCat was proud to be invited by Microsoft to help develop their new Bing Translator plugin. It was the perfect opportunity to show off the talents and creativity of our incredible development team.

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We’ve Improved

Here at IvyCat, ‘good enough’ is never good enough. We are always striving to provide new services and improve our customers’ experience.

Earlier this year, IvyCat included free Sucuri monitoring for all of our WordPress Maintenance customers. Our maintenance program not only keeps your site secure, updated and backed-up, we do it all so you never have to worry about your site’s safety again. It’s quite the bargain, if we do say so ourselves.

For our hosting customers we had two major improvements this year. First, IvyCat partnered with CloudFlare to provide this top-notch service to the sites we host. CloudFlare can not only greatly improve your site’s speed but it will also protect you from a wide range of attacks…all at no additional charge. Win!

We also created a Server Status page which allows our hosting clients to quickly and easily check on the status of their site’s host.

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We’ve Had Fun!

It’s true, IvyCat has had a ton of fun this year, again thanks to you!

While updating or creating a new site for a client is always exciting, it’s especially so when it’s a close neighbor. We were proud to be a part of the creative and innovative Pianos in the Parks project and are looking forward to seeing what they create next spring!

Recently, IvyCat rolled out the improved Uptown Gig Harbor site which features many of the vendors and locations we’ve all grown to love throughout the years.

And, of course, there was the release of WordPress 4.0. Let’s face it, few things are as fun for a WordPress geek than a new version’s release. It’s like toys on Christmas morning.

Speaking of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice and even Festivus, no matter which holidays you’re celebrating this month, we hope you and yours have a truly magical holiday season.

What are some of the highlights you’re most proud of this year? Share in the comments so we can celebrate with you!