When we hire new WordPress developers to join our team it’s quite easy to spot the difference. But we are experienced. If you are on a client side it’s not so easy.
That is why we decided to share some of the secret sauce that will help you find really good developers for your next project. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a single freelancer to complete a small task or a WordPress software house that will provide a team to build your complex web application.
What you will hear often but it’s not true
It’s not possible in WordPress
In 99% of the cases, it’s not true. It’s just a lack of knowledge and experience and a bit of ignorance. Installing WordPress and configuring a couple of free plugins doesn’t make a developer.
But many freelancers and agencies on the market claim to be developers while all their experience and expertise are limited to clicking through the admin area.
You should rather see an answer like: It’s doable, but will be expensive and will take quite a lot of time to build it.
We can easily build it with a couple of free plugins
…or maybe thirty plugins. And a powerful theme that you can buy for 19$. And it will take like a week or so. Well, in many cases this is just asking for troubles. If you think you can build complex business software or web application within a couple of days and you are going to rely on a bunch of free and not trusted components… your development partner should at least inform you about all the risks and different options.
It’s your decision and you can take the tech debt but it’s the developer who should show you different options so you are aware of the risk, pros, and cons.
WordPress is better than XYZ
This is something you will hear from salespeople who don’t really know WordPress themselves. In the web software world, there are several choices (different languages, frameworks, CMSs, …) and they are all good very often.
WordPress is worse than XYZ
This is something you will hear from someone who doesn’t know WordPress or someone who is trying to sell you different CMS or different platforms (like SaaS tools).
You should rather see something like: “WordPress is a bit different than XYZ. WordPress does this and XYZ does that. We believe that it will be better for you to use XYZ because of ABC…“
What is the point?
I have been making websites for clients since 2004. It’s before WordPress was even released. I have attended hundreds of meetings, created thousands of offers. I was also working on a client’s side. What have I learned?
If you are looking for a good WordPress developer (or any web developer), you should focus on:
- their experience
- their communication skills
- their openness to discuss different views on the matter
- checking if they have some strong opinions they don’t want to discuss
- starting worrying if they say yes to everything but don’t ask too many questions