

How to work effectively with WordPress Experts - mduo
https://codeable.io/work-with-wordpress-experts/

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pgrote
There are 2 specific areas I let folks know about before securing Wordpress
development help:

1) Plugins: Discuss with the developer their thoughts on plugins and how they
should be implemented. Does the developer want to write their own? If so,
discuss ownership and existing support. Leverage existing plugins? DIscuss
conflicts of support among changes developer made vs. plugins.

2) Hosting: Non-technical people sometimes don't understand the effects
hosting can have on a small business website. I suggest to them to ask the
developer for their thoughts, especially if the developer is doing the
hosting.

Wordpress is a great platform for small businesses.

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mduo
Interesting points here, specifically 2). What do you mean by asking the
developer his thoughts about hosting?

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pgrote
Here is the text of an email I sent a relative when they were looking for WP
development. This is the part about hosting.

"The dev sounds pretty sharp. About the hosting ... it's great they want to
offer a one stop for the development effort, but keep in mind a few things:

1) If you discontinue your relationship with the developer, it might be
difficult to "take your site" to another host if your agreement includes
hosting.

2) The developer might be a reseller for a hosting company, which is usually
ok. Try to find out which hosting company it is and let me know. Some hosting
companies are better suited for the sales you are trying to drive versus an
informational site.

3) Find out if the developer is responsible for regular maintenance of the
back end (web server serving pages and security updates to the operating
system). "

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bdcravens
I agree that this advice is good, but kinda general.

A few things I've found (both as an occasional WP dev and outsourcing our WP
dev):

* Hosting: many WP shops want to resell their own hosting, whereas you may want to keep it on your servers or use a high-end provider like WPEngine. If you defer this to the end, you may find they made decisions that won't work on your hosting environment.

* Plugin management: It won't be long before you have a red badge indicating a plugin needs updating. Clarify who keeps them up-to-date, and what the policies are regarding compatibility.

* Licenses: If the developer uses commercial plugins, who pays for and owns the license? This is critical as they may have purchased N licenses for Gravity Forms etc. The same applies to plugins that license by the year (again, Gravity Forms is a good example of this) Also, verify theme licensing: you don't want them to purchase a theme once and then use it on yours and others' sites if the license doesn't permit it.

* Theme compatibility: I've run into a situation where a designer did a Genesis sub-theme that wasn't compatible with Wordpress 4.0+, and we had to push back on this issue.

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mtbcoder
I'm not sure what this has to do with Wordpress or Wordpress developers
specifically. It seems a more apt title would be "some really broad tips on
outsourcing development tasks." I'm assuming this is content for the sake of
the search engines and the targeted keyword phrase is "Wordpress Experts".

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mduo
I wrote about WordPress just because it's what I've direct experience with.
Within the post, in fact, I wrote that these tips apply to other CMSs and
other development-related jobs you outsource.

Do you have any tips related to WordPress I should add to my list? If so, let
me know :)

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mtbcoder
> Within the post, in fact, I wrote that these tips apply to other CMSs and
> other development-related jobs you outsource.

Exactly, your article isn't about working with Wordpress "experts" and does
not really touch on this topic. If it were, I would expect to read about
specific issues you have come across when dealing with external Wordpress
developers or even freelance PHP developers and how you've mitigated them.

My argument is that the headline contextually has little to do with the
generic tips you are giving. It just seems like you are generating content for
the sake of content and the search engines. Which is fine, but not really
productive for a site like this.

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astrowilliam
Working within Wordpress every day and also being a developer of WP, this is
solid advice.

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mduo
Thanks man, happy you enjoyed it!

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matjazmuhic
Awesome... :)

