If you are reading this, then you've undoubtedly seen the term 'SSL Certificate' or just 'SSL' mentioned somewhere or other in the past few months, and you might be wondering - what is an SSL Certificate, and should my website or application have one?

SSL Certificate stands for Secure Socket Layer Certificate, which is a file that allows your website or application to create encrypted and secure connections to your users. Websites using SSL can be identified by the prefix 'https' in their URL (the 's' stands for Secure); Your browser will typically display a green lock icon or turn the URL bar green when visiting these sites.

Example of Chrome's address bar with a secure (top), and insecure (bottom) URL

One of the most common ways for hackers to steal information, and marketing companies to track users, is to intercept the data sent when they are browsing the web - this is commonly called 'sniffing'. Sniffing can easily be done on a non-SSL connection with free software - so easily, that airports, coffee shops, any public wifi you use is almost definitely intercepting your traffic to some degree, if only to serve you better advertisements.

SSL negates this vulnerability by creating a secure connection to a website, such that only the website, and your computer can understand the information being sent back and forth. So - do you need a SSL certificate? If your website has any type of form, or deals with any payment transactions, you're going to want an SSL certificate. Even a simple contact form should be secured with SSL to prevent a 3rd party from intervening. If your website doesn't have any of those - there is still a valid reason to have an SSL certificate: Google is using it as a search ranking parameter. This means that sites with an SSL certificate will appear higher in results than sites without one (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html).

The average person is exposed to 5,000 advertisements per day, 1,825,000 a year. Whether through billboards on our way to work, tv advertisements at home, or pop-ups on Facebook, you are constantly exposed to a plethora of design in everyday life as advertisers strategically attempt to grab your attention for what little time we, as consumers, give them.

 

At first it can seem annoying to be bombarded with advertisements every day, and at some point, we might even try to ignore or avoid these nuisances. But as a designer, taking a step back and seeing a beautiful opportunity for inspiration from these advertisements could be extremely beneficial. This daily exposure can instead be seen as design research and help you in your own techniques of communicating through design. Start paying attention to every advertisement you come across and take the chance to critique and dissect what is working and what is not. Did the ad grab your attention? Can you understand the concept? Is it well executed? Is there a clear call to action? Is the point being made clearly? All these questions are important to be able to communicate properly with your target audience. To question other ad designs and their purpose will help you execute your messages better as well. Do not allow yourself to be annoyed... be inspired!

Take this inspiration to the next level…there are many other resources that can help critical and creative thinking. Read books, go to lectures, listen to podcasts, look up TED talks, research the greatest designers past and present. Allow yourself to form an opinion of what you believe works and what does not work. With all of this, experiment and have fun with design! Learn to love to make connections with everything around you from graphic design to architectural design to psychology, the medical field, even sports. The more connections you can make and relate to design, the more opportunities you create for inspiration in your design to better relate and communicate to your audiences.

You probably have heard of WordPress at one time or another, your company or personal site might even run on it, but you might not have heard of WordPress Multisite. Multisite is a very useful feature of WordPress that allows you to create a 'network' of sites, all running off of one WordPress install. Furthermore, it allows you to use sub-domains, sub-directories, or custom domains that point to each separate 'site'. As the network administrator, or Super Admin, you can limit the scope of individual site administrators only allowing certain plugins, themes, etc.; essentially creating your own "WordPress.com".

This can be extremely useful for companies that want to roll out individual sites for each of their locations, or parent organizations that want individual sites for their companies. The individual sites in Multisite can be as similar or as distinct as you would like; and the management/maintenance of them all is reduced to that of a single website. This can be a very effective way to reduce the overall time and budget spent managing and updating your multiple WordPress sites.

From a fiscal side - deploying sites via a WordPress Multisite installation can also be more cost effective. While traffic and space requirements are hard to gauge, the server space required to run Multsite is much smaller compared to running the same number of sites, each with their own WordPress installation. Deployment of a site is much easier: using the Domain Mapping plugin, you can set up a new domain for a site in a few minutes (with no technical knowledge), and management/updating is streamlined, as a single update effects all sites in the Multisite network.

Looking for some more resources for WordPress Multisite:

• WordPress Codex - Create A Network
• Mashable - Beginner's Guide to Multisite
• WP Beginner - What is Multisite

If you are interested in discussing a WordPress Multisite deployment for your organization or company, let us know via our contact page.