Thinking Outside The Box as a WordPress Designer

As a WordPress designer, you are familiar with tweaking clean, user-friendly, and responsive WordPress themes. You know how to take full advantage of innovative design options like a visual composer, drag-and-drop page builder, and revolution slider. Yet while you are a master of your craft, you still need to have a nodding acquaintance with tech applications outside it as this will have a direct impact on your overall success.

In order to show the relevance of what may appear to be a moot point, imagine that a multimillion dollar business hires you to scrap their website and replace it with a far more usable content management system and a much more captivating and engaging look-and-feel. Naturally, you shock them with an extreme makeover using a gorgeous WordPress theme. For most designers, this is where you and your client part ways on friendly terms.

However, what if you were someone who was not only aware of revolutionary changes in website design but also aware of revolutionary changes in related fields like hosting websites on a secure network, then the scenario might change in the following way…

After you have been hired, you noticed much to your surprise that this multimillion dollar company is so naïve when it comes to technical things that they are using a shared hosting plan. You explain that any downtime could result in a huge loss in business revenue because customers will not be able to access the new website. You suggest that they get hosting that guarantees 99.99% uptime. In fact, you ask them to think outside the box and think of virtualization when it comes to connecting their website to a secure infrastructure.

Do you see how knowing about something outside the field of design could instantly boost your client’s confidence in you, leading to more work and more referrals.

So, with that in mind, let’s get you up to speed on the latest breakthrough in IT–virtualization

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization is creating a virtual version of something. Before virtualization, people only knew how to create actual versions of something. In the world of IT, it is now possible to create virtual systems like virtual servers, virtual storage devices and virtual networks.

In the newly-emerging industry of virtualization, VMware is a recognized leader, with VMware NSX being its virtual networking software product. There are numerous advantages to virtual networking environments: they slash costs because there is minimal physical equipment. In essence, network operations are abstracted from the primary hardware onto a spread virtualization layer. We are now talking about logical firewalls, logical switches, logical routers, logical ports, and a wide range of other network elements. However, even virtual systems need protection, which makes it necessary to get security software for VMware virtual environments.

As a designer suggesting that clients begin thinking about virtualized servers and networks to make your WordPress website become downtime-proof, you may also need to mention the increased security measures possible like anti-malware, intrusion detection and prevention, advanced host firewall, integrity monitoring, log inspection, and application scanning.

Why Bridging the Knowledge Gap Matters

Although it might seem like a stretch to suggest that a WordPress designer learn things outside his or her field of expertise, an analogy might make things clearer:

A designer who knows about what is happening in the field of technology is like a General Practitioner who understands the work done by medical specialists. While a General Practitioner can’t hope to have in-depth understanding of 130 recognized medical specialties, he or she needs to know enough to recommend patients for further help.

As a designer, you will be exposed to people who know nothing about technology. You are their information portal to this bewildering world. If you can at least point the way–in much the same way that a General Practitioner can recommend which specialist a patient should see–you will have served your role well. While you will probably never have to measure the performance speed of a logical central processing unit, it’s enough to know that virtualization exists. Knowing what is happening in IT not only puts you in a better position to make useful recommendations to clients but it can even help you out should you decide to set up your own online business.