A virtual private network (VPN) needs no introduction. Not only have you heard of it, but you are also likely using one on a daily basis. But traditional VPNs were invented over two decades ago at a time when enterprise applications were hosted in local data centers and most of the workforce worked on-premise.
Today, enterprises operate quite differently, and the network perimeter VPNs were designed to protect has practically dissolved with the increasing adoption of cloud-based infrastructures.
A typical enterprise now has dozens of applications hosted on public cloud platforms like Amazon AWS not to mention how most, if not all, company workforces, big and small, are now thriving in remote working environments out of necessity.
So while traditional VPNs allow secure remote access, more is needed for modern distributed corporate networks. The fact that many of today’s applications and data are no longer behind a single network perimeter—they have moved to the cloud—calls for the need for a new, next-generation VPN.
Enter software-defined perimeter (SDP) technology.
In this post I’ll show you what SDPs are and how they work as well as their key advantages over VPNs. As you will discover, SDPs are the way forward, so it’s important to be informed of their key characteristics.
What Is a VPN?
Before we dive into SDPs and their key differences compared to VPNs, let’s quickly recap what a VPN is.
As the name suggests, a VPN provides users with a virtual network that is private so they can connect to the web in a secure and anonymous manner.
A VPN creates a secure connection—a private “tunnel”—between your device (your laptop or smartphone) and the internet. It serves as an intermediary when you go online, hiding your IP address—your personal identification code that reveals your location and makes your identity and activities traceable—thus helping conceal your identity.
In other words, the private network lets you send your data via an encrypted, secure connection (using different protocols like IPSec, SSL, WireGuard, etc.) to an external server. From there, the traffic is sent to the internet. In this way, your IP address shown online is also modified.
So, in short, a VPN helps users connect to online pages and applications securely. As long as it’s active, it keeps their connection and data private and allows them to route (and anonymize) their traffic through various globally-placed servers.
What Is an SDP?
SDP is an approach to cybersecurity based on the Zero Trust Security Framework. SDP is designed to provide the same user experience regardless of whether the user is on-premises or beyond the network’s perimeter while granting access to only the resources users need.
This ability to provide the same experience means that users don’t need to remember to connect the way they would with a current-generation VPN.
The term “perimeter” often creates confusion, since it’s conventionally used to refer to elements like demilitarized zones (DMZs) and firewalls. Despite the rather confusing terminology, SDP takes the exact opposite approach.
As opposed to conventional enterprise architectures, which detach the enterprise network from the outside world by a fixed perimeter, SDP dynamically creates one-to-one network connections between each user and the resources they access. All unauthorized network resources are inaccessible.
According to Gartner, “enterprise access requirements are growing ever more complex due to application dynamics, cloud adoption, and mergers. To cut through this complexity, technical professionals should explore SDP — a new technology whose strength lies in facilitating access to enterprise apps.”
An SDP is leveraged as software on end-user devices, controllers, servers, or gateways. It can be deployed either as a standalone product or as a cloud-hosted service.
SDP vs. VPN: Why SDPs Are the Way Forward?
With a clear understanding of software-defined perimeter and virtual private network, let’s look at the key differences between both and how SDPs are the next generation of VPNs.
Facet
SDP
VPN
Security
Authentication before access
Identity-centric access
Isolated application access to any application
Makes applications invisible until a user’s identity has authorized and authenticated
Continuous risk assessment at the device, user, and application levels
Least-privilege access through IAM integration
Secure access for any application, cloud, or on-premise regardless of user location
Access before authentication
IP-based access
Network access is needed for access to applications
Open ports exposed to the internet
No device risk assessment
Difficult to enforce least-privilege access
Management
Cloud-delivered
Dynamically scales according to business needs
Infrastructure management outsourced to the service provider
Integrates with IAM, SIEM, and other parts of the technology stack
Heavily appliance-based
Inflexible infrastructure and static capacity
Administrative overhead of management
Susceptible to misconfiguration and dependent on the configuration of other technologies
User Experience
Consistent access across device types and platforms
Provides the same access experience for remote users and workers on-site
Efficiently handles network transitions and built for all device types
Distributed service edge allows for efficient routing to mitigate latency
Seamless authentication and SSO
Fragmented access experience and a constant need to re-authenticate
Only provides access for remote users
Unreliable on Wi-Fi and cellular connections as well as mobile devices
Legacy design creates speed and connectivity issues
Overall, SDPs are better than traditional corporate VPNs. Firstly, they offer stronger security, as they allow tighter control over data access, minimizing the attack surface and risk to the enterprise network. An SDP has an identity-based approach that enforces a customized policy for each user device, whereas VPN access is overly permissive, granting remote workers access to more of the network than is required to complete their tasks.
SDPs also offer better user experience, whereas VPNs are often unreliable and slow. In contrast, with SDPs there’s a global network of points-of-presence, or PoPs, that provides a network backbone that reduces latency and optimizes the routing of data.
Another area where SDPs have an advantage is that they offer greater scalability. For many companies, VPNs are installed and expanded as demand requires. As the business grows and adds additional VPN connectivity to provide support for business partners and customers, both the management complexity and costs rise significantly.
Conversely, with a fixed price per user, regardless of how many network resources the user needs to access, an SDP solution with a cloud-native infrastructure can quickly, easily, and affordably scale up to thousands of concurrent users relying on a backbone of global PoPs.
Moreover, despite these advantages, SDPs generally come at a reduced cost. An SDP cloud platform will typically not charge by the number of data centers or sites added but rather by the number of users connected, which results in lower total costs. This is not the case with VPNs, wherein adding multiple sites, data centers drive up costs due to the need for additional infrastructure and licenses.
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, 60% of enterprises will phase out most of their remote access virtual private networks (VPNs) in favor of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) security models like SDPs. And so, SDPs clearly seem to be the way forward.
SDP Is the Way Forward
With improved end-user experience, better scalability, and greater flexibility, SDPs provide not only all the features of a current-generation VPN but also solutions to many disadvantages of VPN like tighter security, including application-based security.
SDPs let you adopt Google’s BeyondCorp approach of a zero trust model without changing your network infrastructure or applications. Remote employees, partners, contractors, and customers can all have easy, granular access to specific resources without the need for a traditional VPN.
The global network of smart and connected objects (internet of things or IoT) has changed every industry. These smart devices have contributed to what we commonly refer to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. It’s tough to imagine life without these connected devices as they make life easier and give us greater control over our lives.
Almost all tech innovations depend on the internet, and IoT drives this trend. The latest estimations by Statista reveal that the global IoT devices market will amount to 75.44 billion by 2025. IoT is changing the game for businesses around the world, giving them a serious edge over their competitors. However, a recent Microsoft study reveals that a majority of organizations lack advanced IoT skills.
It’s no wonder, then, that the demand for IoT developers is growing exponentially. An increasing number of businesses are looking to hire proficient IoT developers who can use their skills to build innovative IoT solutions that address business opportunities.
If you are planning to compete in the IoT job market, it makes sense to hone your skills and build your reputation as an expert in this field. In this post, I’ll share with you five valuable tips to help you become an ace IoT developer.
Develop an Understanding of Sensors and Hardware
An IoT developer is expected to specialize in several areas, depending on the complexity of the system and the layer of the IoT architecture they are working on.
For the device layer, for instance, the developer is expected to specialize in embedded software development for smart sensors and endpoint IoT devices. Similarly for the data analytics layer, an IoT developer should have experience in batch and stream big data processing, data visualization, and implementation of ML algorithms.
Besides possessing practical knowledge of coding languages (for the back end of web applications), IoT developers should have a deep understanding of embedded systems, field gateways, and data management and analytics. They should know how sensors work and integrate into the IoT architecture.
A computer science or electrical engineering background can secure your career as a successful IoT developer. Alternatively, several online education platforms like Udemy and upGrad offer certified programs and guided modules on IoT sensors and devices. Enrolling in such online courses will give you an in-depth understanding of the technical areas essential to professionals in the IoT industry.
These platforms offer various courses and projects related to sensors and wireless communication, allowing aspiring IoT developers to upgrade their knowledge.
Get Proficient at Python
A Stack Overflow survey revealed that Python is popular and the fastest-growing programming language among professional developers. It is a versatile language that supports any programming style. Unlike C++ or Java, Python is designed to implement business logic right at the device level.
The language is easy to learn, syntax, and debug. It supports large standard libraries and meets all developer requirements, whether they are creating an IoT project from scratch or working with sensors and actuators. In fact, Python is used for Raspberry Pi, the most popular microcontroller in the market.
Python is indispensable for IoT projects involving machine learning and other machine intelligence tools. So, if you want to be a successful IoT developer, knowing Python can be a huge plus point. It can help you code development boards, work with Raspberry Pi, and automate more efficiently. Moreover, you can use the Python server-side language to interact with the database.
Play with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino
Greenhorn IoT developers who are passionate about learning more about IoT through experiments should work with Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno. Understanding how these two work can help you enhance your IoT skills and apply that knowledge to fields like wearable tech, smart environments, and home automation.
Further, several factors need to be considered when choosing suitable hardware for an IoT project. For instance, scalability, functionality, and flexibility are a few factors that determine whether or not particular hardware is good for a project.
Both Raspberry Pi and Arduino are great for prototyping. However, Raspberry Pi offers more onboard features and can run more complex functionality than Arduino. On the other hand, Arduino—although pricey—is effort-efficient and can easily handle simple repetitive tasks.
So, if your IoT application needs to collect data from multiple sensors, pull data from the internet, connect to a smartphone, and share a complex output, you should go for Raspberry Pi. Experimenting with Raspberry Pi and Arduino will help you understand how they compare and make a suitable decision based on the project needs.
Pursue a Passion Project
IoT is an ever-evolving domain that demands high-quality, scalable, robust, secure, and user-friendly solutions. However, these applications evolve at a blistering pace, rendering dream IoT applications obsolete in a few months.
To stay on top of these ever-evolving trends, aspiring IoT developers should take up passion projects that can give them a real-world IoT experience. Further, you should consider showcasing these projects in an IoT hackathon or summit. This will improve exposure to your prototyping systems and help you network with small and medium-sized firms for project opportunities.
Join an IoT community
Being surrounded by a community of inventors, developers, and business visionaries can help an IoT developer in more ways than one.
By engaging with thought leaders and mentors within the industry, you can share your ideas and challenges you face, and discuss the best practices and growth opportunities. Such interactions will help you refine your thoughts, allowing you to evolve as an expert IoT developer.
IoT is a nascent and nebulous domain. A community of experienced IoT professionals can give you a peek into what’s happening in the industry. It also strengthens your network, opening up a world of opportunities for you as a developer.
Communities are built on shared challenges of people committed to a common cause—mastering and contributing innovative ideas to the domain. Joining an IoT community will help you develop a solid career path alongside seasoned developers and mentors.
Over to You!
The IoT landscape is expanding. Innovative IoT applications are transforming our world into a complex and dynamic system of connected devices, making our lives easier. The widespread adoption of IoT has made it pertinent for businesses to have skilled IoT developers on board who can come up with innovative and competitive solutions.
Right now is an exciting time to enter the IoT development field. If you are passionate about IoT, use the best practices shared in this post to advance your knowledge in the domain and position yourself as an expert IoT developer.
As the COVID-19 pandemic is taking charge, businesses around the world are experiencing a major crisis, with many going bust.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has moved across the globe, we’ve seen the devastating impact on businesses everywhere. The stock markets are going haywire and financial hardship is prevalent. People have lost and are continuing to lose their jobs, and financial experts indicate that things are going to be bad for some time to come.
Now, life as a remote freelance programmer is already awash with uncertainty, and adding a pandemic to the equation can result in an absolute fiasco. Because if your clients’ business is suffering, it inevitably means your own freelance business will also take a toll.
You may already have started losing regular work from clients, and the clients that you still have could be requesting rate reductions or deferred payments, all of which means tough times for you. So, if you haven’t already started to hunt for new clients, now is the time. Finding new clients, especially in a time of economic crisis, can be a tall order, so you’re going to need to work harder than ever.
While there are no easy answers to how you can recover with a strong client base and steady income, we’ve compiled expert advice from various sources and here are four best practices that will help you find new clients as a remote programmer during the coronavirus crisis.
Make Use of Your Network
First off, there’s no need to act like all is going well. You may feel that opening up about the difficulties you’re facing as a one-person business won’t do your online personal branding any good, but in the long run, it’s better to stay afloat than drown just to keep up appearances. That is, don’t be afraid to post on social media that you’re available for new opportunities or open to new clients.
Your existing network of ex-colleagues, fellow remote programmers, and past clients is an extremely useful resource to tap into right now. Many of them are likely facing similar challenges and may have already found ways to overcome them, so they may be able to help.
For instance, past clients who can’t hire you at present could refer you to someone who can. Or, one of your ex-colleague may have a reference in a company that needs your contractual services. Or, a fellow freelancer may have requirements that they feel is not their type of work, or they can’t take up for some reason, so they can pass it on to you. Likewise, you must be a resource for others in your network too — if you know of a job that doesn’t fit you but might fit someone else, be proactive in sending it to that person.
Even if no concrete jobs or work opportunities surface from engaging with your network, you will surely receive support or guidance that points you in the right direction. For example, you could simply ask them what they’re doing to cope with these testing times. You can also benefit from business guidance and support provided on governmental platforms like the Small Business Administration.
Hone Your Pitch and Be Persistent
Remember how when you first started remote programming, you sent out multiple cold pitches and follow-ups every week and eventually found a little bit of success in all that effort. You refined and personalized your pitch, tried things that didn’t work (and ruled them out), and with a good deal of persistence, you were able to find a client or handful that did pay well.
Those days were difficult as well. But it’s only because you were persistent and mindful of your outreach pitches that you landed your first few clients that eventually led to steady work and business.
While cold pitching during a pandemic may not be your best bet, dedicating a good chunk of time each day to hone your pitch (to make it truly compelling) before you send it out to those referrals and people from your network may make a huge difference. If you feel your pitch is top-notch but you’re still getting declined, it is a good idea to get feedback from your peers on how it could be even better. Of course, it is very likely that your pitch is being rejected simply because the potential client can’t hire anyone currently.
Besides, persistence is key, and there’s nothing wrong with resorting to the old ways of bidding for gigs on online platforms when you’re enduring a dry spell. If you’re an experienced programmer, you may feel your business has outgrown those rookie techniques (such as applying for a contract job on LinkedIn), but if referrals aren’t helping at the moment, you must do whatever it takes to keep the boat floating.
Work on Your Back Office Tasks
Apart from polishing your pitches and making direct efforts to get new clients, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes tasks that will help you to keep going. Because again, in essence, you are a one-person business.
So, to keep things running smoothly and maintain that major focus on acquiring new clients, you need to ensure that all the admin work is done well. That is, now is a good time to reorganize your operations, get your budget in order, and review and streamline your expenses. You can consider finding more cost-effective alternative tools and software subscriptions to the ones you’re currently using to run your business.
Furthermore, you can spend some time revamping your portfolio website, learning useful skills or programming languages that are growing in demand, or getting an online certification or credential to make yourself more marketable. You can even learn a trick or two from the remote working playbook on how to create a proper, enterprise-grade remote work environment that sets you up for success.
Directly or indirectly, all these things will help you in your hunt for new clients during the pandemic and beyond.
Consider Being More Flexible
For the time being, how about letting go of the idea of sticking firmly to one particular niche? It may not sound appealing, but diversifying your services may just be the key to getting new clients right away.
If your remote programming niche happened to be in an industry that has suffered the full wrath of the virus (such as travel and retail), think about how you can pivot to serve an industry that has greater opportunities currently (such as healthcare and educational technology). Assess your transferable skills and match them with the industries that you have any contacts in, and then make your move.
Also, if for example, you were focused solely on providing remote frontend web development, maybe now you can also do some backend programming if someone has a requirement.
Moreover, flexibility goes beyond extending your services laterally. Perhaps there were potential clients in the past that you chose not to work with, maybe because their requirements didn’t quite match what you wanted to do or maybe they offered to pay a bit lower than what you think you’re worth.
Don’t hesitate in contacting those former leads to touch base. Such flexibility and savviness can help you land more work during the pandemic and also build a long-term business relationship.
Yes, You Can Still Find New Clients
The timeline of the novel COVID-19 pandemic is still hazy. No one really knows how long we need to endure these trying times — is it a question of weeks, months, or even years? Regardless of what happens, now is the time to get practical and implement strategies that keep you in the game, such as:
Leveraging your network of ex-colleagues and clients to get referrals and guidance
Honing your cold outreach skills and being tenacious
Revamping your portfolio, upskilling yourself, and streamlining your expenses
Pivoting to a different niche to serve industries that are still thriving, expanding your services laterally, and being more flexible with pricing/payment
Many businesses both big and small won’t make it, but if you stay persistent, be adaptable, and harness your network, you have a solid chance to see this through. And once you make it to the other side of this crisis, you will emerge stronger and more competitive than ever before.
You obviously know what a programmer is, but a “growth hacker,” is that even a real job title? Why, yes it is!
It goes without saying, every business shares a common desire for growth regardless of the industry. And today, the competition in any software industry or niche is absolutely cutthroat. So much so that for many industries, especially in the SaaS and e-commerce space, it necessitates the existence of this relatively new title.
As a programmer, you already have a great foundation to transition into this exciting role because your coding knowledge will come in handy during real-time website tweaking (more on that later).
In other words, there are only four key skills you’ll need to add to your arsenal if you’re serious about making this transition. But first …
What Exactly Is a Growth Hacker?
In his blog post titled “Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup,” Sean Ellis, who first coined the term in 2010, described a growth hacker as “a person whose true north is growth.”
What Ellis meant is that a growth hacker’s every decision should be focused on the growth of the company, and that decision should be truly informed. The most effective growth hackers (from, say, Airbnb and Dropbox) have been able to steer startups through various stages until they are large-scale enterprises, using straight-up ingenuity.
A growth hacker’s primary job involves scrutinizing how every activity a company does is going to influence its growth. Growth hacking involves traditional and nontraditional approaches to improve the growth rate and market adoption of a company’s product or service.
Experimenting with a variety of ideas and focusing on the ones that are most feasible and scalable is what growth hacking essentially is.
A Growth Hacker Is Not Another Marketer
People often confuse the role of a marketer and a growth hacker. Yes, there is quite a bit of overlap between the roles of a marketer and a growth hacker, but no, they’re certainly not the same.
Both must have the fundamental skills to help a business move forward, but a marketer has a broad focus across several aspects of the business, whereas a growth hacker is solely focused on growth.
To rephrase Anton Ego’s remark in the movie Ratatouille:
“Not everyone can become a great artist growth hacker, but a great artist growth hacker can come from anywhere.”
You could say that the only thing required to become a growth hacker is an unadulterated passion for growth. Nothing else matters. To quote Aaron Ginn, former Head of Growth at StumbleUpon:
“Growth hacking is more of a mindset than a toolkit.”
Put differently, practically anyone can become a growth hacker, from coders and designers to project managers and testers. Your background doesn’t make as much difference as your mindset.
Still, as a programmer aspiring to switch into the role of a growth hacker, you’re curious as to what exactly it takes for a successful transition. Well, the good news is that …
Programmers Already Have an Edge to Become Growth Hackers
First off, know that a growth hacker doesn’t have to be a coding guru, but knowledge of programming (Python) and web languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will definitely be a big plus.
Your coding experience will enable you to experiment with different things on your company’s website (A/B testing) without having to rely on a developer all the time. If you identify something that needs experimentation for possible improvement, you’ll be able to make modifications without having to wait for your request to be processed by the development team.
With real-time changes, you can get answers quickly and achieve faster growth than if you have to wait around for someone else to help you out.
But, as you’d expect, there’s a lot more to the life of a growth hacker than just website experimentation. For a successful transition into this role, there are four skills you must possess to start off on the right foot: copywriting, outreach, design, and project management.
Copywriting
A high-quality website, email, and landing page; and high-quality social media feeds are pivotal to business growth. You need to be able to create good content, also known as copy, because poor copy can be a major deterrent in achieving the growth milestones you’ve set.
As a growth hacker, you need to know what good copy looks like. You should be able to edit mediocre copy and transform it into something that’s a joy to read (while conveying the message effectively).
So, what constitutes good copy? In a nutshell, good copy is:
persuasive — it encourages the reader to take action.
conversational — it talks directly to the audience (using “you” and “me”).
easy to understand — it does not use complex words, long-winded sentences, or jargon.
engaging — it tells a good story, using examples with a touch of humor, without beating around the bush.
Outreach
To grow a startup, you need to get your product or service in front of as many people as possible. The internet is already brimming with other websites, blogs, and influencers that have massive followings.
You’ll need to know how to leverage those sites and influencers to drive interested leads and potential clients over to your website. Hunting down and then strategically contacting these websites is known as outreach. It involves scouring the web for relevant sites of high-quality and authority to target before crafting engaging outreach emails to grab their attention and get them to collaborate.
Offering high-quality content is a great way to get them to cooperate. Bloggers, in particular, are always on the lookout for good content to add to their blogs. With just a single meaningful collaboration, you could witness a huge influx of traffic and subsequent conversions over to your website.
Thus, the ability to outreach effectively is a must-have skill for any growth hacker worth their salt.
Design
As a growth hacker, you obviously don’t have to be an expert in design, but basic design knowledge can go a long way in helping your company grow fast.
If information isn’t displayed in an appealing and user-friendly manner on your startup’s website or app, people aren’t going to stick around.
You must know the fundamentals of interaction design, user research, and usability testing. At the very least, you need to have a knack for thinking from the user’s perspective.
With fairly strong UI and UX design skills, you can present sound recommendations on the different design elements of the website or app so that they accurately reflect your business and generate revenue in the long run.
Project Management
Project managers play a big role in business growth, especially for product-based startups. They help bridge the gap between different teams, ensuring that the least amount of resources are used to produce maximum results and the product is shipped on time.
With project management skills, such as budgeting, leadership, and negotiation, you’ll be able to use your startup’s resources more efficiently and cost-effectively, which translates to better and faster growth of the company.
Break the Rules
You don’t need to be adept at all of these, but as a growth hacker, you need to be a jack of all trades. You need to be shrewd and do whatever it takes. For instance, be bold and take calculated marketing risks with social media content — who knows, it might just go viral and get your startup that much-needed exposure.
With an average starting salary of nearly $85,000 (according to PayScale), becoming a growth hacker can be quite lucrative. But you may not be able to find a job as a growth hacker just based on your programming skills. Don’t worry. Start building your growth hacking portfolio by being a self-employed growth hacker. Work on growing your personal brand until you are able to prove to potential employers that you know your stuff.
You might presume that growth hackers can’t work remotely, but that’s not the case. Yes, you can be earning extra as a programmer from home. Likewise, you can earn extra as a part-time remote growth hacker, too. There are plenty of new opportunities opening up every day on LinkedIn and dedicated platforms.
Growth hacking doesn’t come with a fixed set of rules or job description. It demands you to think outside the box and unleashes your crafty creativity. It’s all about your mindset and your ability to hustle.
If you like the idea of helping companies grow, you’re already on your way to being a growth hacker. Your programming experience gives you a foundation; by working to develop your skills in writing good copy, reaching out and making connections, learning basic design, and being a program manager, you can easily take on this new challenge in the software field.
Creating your first website is an exciting and overwhelming experience at the same time. Exciting, because you are about to use your developing skills to create your own website. Overwhelming, because it can be tough to determine where to begin. That’s where WordPress can help!
WordPress is not just a blogging platform. It is the most popular content management system (CMS) that’s highly customizable, offering a low setup and maintenance cost. Hence, everyone from entrepreneurs and digital marketing professionals to mega-brands like Mashable, Mozilla, and Coca Cola use WordPress.
The download counter at WordPress.org will tell you how popular this CMS is. In fact, WordPress, or WP, runs over 30% of the internet and enjoys a whopping 60% share in the CMS market.
Though WP started off as a blogging tool, today, it’s the most robust CMS and website-building platform a developer can have. The platform allows you to create full-blown websites using a large variety of plugins and themes together with your coding skills. The CMS is powerful and easy-to-learn and allows you to set up a clean and responsive website fairly quickly.
Regardless of the coding language you are comfortable with, using WordPress for your first website will allow you to create a responsive, reliable, and secure site that serves your purpose well. Dive in to learn why WP is the best platform for programmers, both beginners and experts.
WordPress Takes You Closer to the Major Coding Languages
When working in WP you can modify your site, the core behavior, and the admin panels using any of the web coding languages shared further in this post.
WordPress core was created using PHP and SQL. Its front-end presentation uses a combination of declarative and programming languages, namely HTML and CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX. Having a basic knowledge of these languages will help you work with WordPress to develop your website and write code for the desired plugins and themes.
HTML
HTML is a declarative web “markup” language. Having knowledge of semantically valid HTML will ensure that your pages look the same in every browser.
CSS
CSS makes HTML look good. From the font color and text to the background color, CSS and Media Queries help you style your pages and define how each page behaves on different screen sizes.
PHP
PHPmakes WordPress run on the web server. In other words, it is used to build your webpages and put them together. As a WP user you will not need to write code, but having a basic understanding of PHP will help you modify themes and create your own plugins. You will use PHP features, such as variables, arrays, functions, conditionals, and comparison operators, when working on WordPress. Hence, a fair understanding of the PHP functions will work in your favor.
JavaScript and JQuery
JavaScript and jQuery help you program the behavior of your HTML pages, making them more responsive and user-friendly and ensuring rich client-side interactivity. For instance, if you want a text to appear after the user clicks on a specific button, you can use JavaScript. JQuery is a popular JS library that allows you to chain multiple functions, making sure your code is clean. Having said that, JavaScript is not the main language of WordPress. Hence, it’s OK even if you do not know much about this programming language.
MySQL Database
MySQL database stores the content of each of your WordPress site pages. WP offers a set of PHP functions that safely interact with this database.
AJAX
AJAXenables you to send or receive data without fully reloading a webpage. So, if you want to change the content of the page, you do not need to reload the entire page. WordPress uses AJAX in its admin control panel. For instance, when you write blog posts, AJAX is used to autosave your drafts without your noticing it.
Most coders and programmers need a basic (but responsive!) website with sound functionality, uncluttered design, and a good user experience. WordPress enables you to combine themes, plugins, and custom code to create a unique site based on your requirements.
Themes define the layout and style of a WordPress site, ensuring consistency in layout for the webpages and posts. WP offers responsive themes that are clean, easy to work with, and loaded with several useful backend features. There are thousands of free themes available in the official WordPress Theme Directory. You can also purchase themes on popular sites like Theme Forest, StudioPress, and WooThemes.
Further, you can create a responsive WordPress theme using HTML5, CSS3, specific PHP functions, and responsive design principles.
WP Offers Loads of Plugins for Coders
After selecting a theme for your website, you will have to equip yourself with suitable plugins to start blogging and sharing your code with others. WordPress offers free and premium plugins that allow you to carry out virtually any modification depending on your needs.
For instance, as your site grows in popularity, your audience may be interested in a few coding tutorials or ebooks. You can use WP plugins for this purpose. The official WordPress directory currently has more than 50 thousand plugins.
Moreover, if you know PHP like the back of your hand, you can customize any plugin you want or build your own plugin from scratch.
The Syntax Highlighter for WordPress is one of the most important tools for coders. It allows you to add code to your site without the need for formating, ensuring that the source code is available to the viewers. This plugin supports code highlighting for (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, C, C++, Ruby, and Python, among others.
WordPress Is Secure
Since it is the most popular CMS, WordPress tends to be of immense interest to hackers. However, WP was developed with the user’s security in mind.
The WordPress staff constantly updates the CMS and the plugins. Of course, as a programmer, you need to exercise caution like moving your WordPresss site from HTTP to HTTPS and downloading plugins from the most trusted sources (preferably while you are logged in to WordPress).
Moreover, you will find several forums extending online advice, tutorials, and support in this matter. WordPress security plugins like Sucuri, iThemes, WordFence, and All In One WP Security and Firewall can help protect your site against common threats such as brute force attacks and malware.
Over to You!
WordPress is one of the most popular CMSs across the globe, since it offers excellent design, speed, responsiveness, and flexibility. It is easy-to-learn and open-source. Hence, you can effortlessly edit it as per your preferences, create plugins and themes from scratch, and add an infinite number of functions to your website.
Even creating a demo website on WordPress can be valuable for your developer experience and portfolio. So, go ahead and use WordPress for your maiden website! I am sure you will enjoy the process.
A virtual private network (VPN) needs no introduction. Not only have you heard of it, but you are also likely using one on a daily basis. But traditional VPNs were invented over two decades ago at a time when enterprise applications were hosted in local data centers and most of the workforce worked on-premise.
Another area where SDPs have an advantage is that they offer greater scalability. For many companies, VPNs are installed and expanded as demand requires. As the business grows and adds additional VPN connectivity to provide support for business partners and customers, both the management complexity and costs rise significantly.
Being surrounded by a 
As the COVID-19 pandemic is taking charge, businesses around the world are experiencing a major crisis, with many going bust.
The timeline of the novel COVID-19 pandemic is still hazy. No one really knows how long we need to endure these trying times — is it a question of weeks, months, or even years? Regardless of what happens, now is the time to get practical and implement strategies that keep you in the game, such as:
You obviously know what a programmer is, but a “growth hacker,” is that even a real job title? Why, yes it is!
You’ll need to know how to leverage those sites and influencers to drive interested leads and potential clients over to your website. Hunting down and then strategically contacting these websites is known as outreach. It involves scouring the web for relevant sites of high-quality and authority to target before crafting engaging outreach emails to grab their attention and get them to collaborate.
