Zane DeFazio doesn’t love talking about himself.
Give him a minute, though, and he’ll warm up, usually by diving into a problem he solved, going on a tangent, or, if the timing’s right, mentioning Friday Night Knicks.
“Friday Night Knicks and pizza is our thing,” he says.
It’s a small glimpse into how DeFazio operates: all in on the things he cares about, whether that’s a Knicks basketball game, a side project, or a stubborn WordPress issue that refuses to cooperate.
DeFazio is a WordPress Expert at DreamHost, currently in his second stint with the company. “Two years…with an asterisk,” he says.
That asterisk goes back more than a decade. He first worked in technical support at DreamHost before leaving to dip his toes in web development, teaching at a code school, and taking on agency work. But after reconnecting with former DreamHost coworkers at the company’s annual Halloween party, something stuck.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, I miss this place,’” he recalls.
So he came back.
He Doesn’t Stop at the Symptom, He Tracks the Cause
DeFazio gravitates toward the kinds of problems that don’t have obvious answers.
The ones where you have to dig deeper, test a few ideas, and keep following the trail until something finally makes sense.
“I like trying to find the core issue,” he says. “What is that little piece of code doing that’s setting everything else off?”
That approach often leads him down what he calls “rabbit holes,” tracing issues step by step until the real cause shows itself.
Sometimes, the answer ends up being something surprisingly small.
Like the time a customer’s site kept crashing under heavy traffic. After working through layers of scripts and behavior, DeFazio found the issue.
“Your video counter is DDoSing your site,” he told them.
It’s the kind of fix that only looks simple once someone has taken the time to really understand what’s happening.
And even when there isn’t a perfect solution, DeFazio sticks with it. One customer followed up after a long troubleshooting session just to say how much they appreciated the effort.
Those are the moments he remembers.
A Team Where Curiosity Turns Into Expertise
Part of what keeps DeFazio engaged is the people around him.
“It’s just like a mixture of experts,” he says. “Everybody has their own rabbit hole of expertise.”
At DreamHost, knowledge grows out of real problems. Someone runs into something new, keeps digging, and eventually becomes the person others turn to for help.
That curiosity is shared. Questions are encouraged. People jump in to help. And over time, that builds a team that knows a little bit about everything, and a lot about a few things.
From Fixing Websites to Building Them From Scratch
These days, DeFazio spends much of his time working on DreamHost’s Production Sites program, where the work shifts from fixing customer websites to building them.
That shift has required a different way of thinking: both for him and for the team.
“It’s a totally different skill set,” he says.
Many team members came from support roles, so DeFazio has helped guide the transition including training builders, refining documentation, and creating tools to make the process smoother.
One of those tools captures screenshots of sites at delivery, helping the team track changes and review quality over time. What started as a quick internal solution has turned into something the team relies on daily.
And like most things DeFazio touches, it’s still evolving.
A Scrappy Group That Wasn’t Supposed to Work, But Does
DeFazio describes the Production Sites team as “a scrappy group of misfits.”
It’s not a traditional path into building websites, but that hasn’t slowed anyone down. If anything, it’s pushed the team to adapt quickly and figure things out as they go.
“Everybody’s just kind of zeroed in… like, how can we help the customer?”
That focus shows up in the final product, and in the customers who walk away with something they can actually use to move their ideas forward.
Learning by Doing (and Then Doing More)
DeFazio doesn’t wait around to learn something new. He picks it up when he needs it.
That’s how he ended up learning Perl to build internal tools. It’s also why he’s currently experimenting with AI in his spare time, testing what it can do and where it might go next.
“I just want to learn more… and see what we can do with it,” he says.
There’s always something new to figure out, and he’s usually already halfway into it.
Off the Clock: Family, Pop Punk, and a 1965 Truck
When he’s not working, DeFazio’s focus shifts to family, and things get just as energetic.
He spends time with his wife, Akvile, and their daughter, Giana, whether that’s watching Ghostbuster cartoons from the 90s, cheering at soccer games or keeping up their Friday night routine when the Knicks are on. He’s the loud, supportive dad on the sidelines. He’s fully invested, just without the yelling at referees.
At home, music is a constant. Pop punk, specifically. Paramore is currently a household favorite, and their Spotify habits have even landed them in top listener rankings.
DeFazio also has a habit of picking up projects and going all in, sometimes in unexpected directions.
What started as an interest in woodworking turned into something else entirely when he needed a better way to transport materials. Instead of buying a new truck, he picked up a 1965 Ford F100 that, by his description, was “a smoking pile of crap.”
The engine didn’t last long.
So he replaced it. Along with the drivetrain, despite having little prior experience.
“I knew nothing about mechanics… and ended up doing a full drivetrain and engine replacement,” he says. Naturally, he became more interested in working on the truck than woodworking.
These days, the truck sits in the garage, waiting for its next round of attention, but like most of DeFazio’s projects, it’s not something he’s likely to leave unfinished forever.
One Rule That Guides Everything
For someone who spends so much time working through complex problems, DeFazio keeps his personal philosophy simple:
“Just try to be kind.”
It’s a mindset that shows up everywhere particularly in how he helps customers, supports teammates, and approaches challenges.
And whether he’s chasing down a tricky WordPress issue, tinkering with a new idea, or settling in for a Knicks game and pizza, that approach stays the same: stay curious, stick with it, and see it through.