
Ask HN: How do I hire someone for work I am not familiar with (web development)? - DeusExMachina
I run an online business based on a few separate websites: MailChimp for email marketing, FastSrping as a payment processor, WordPress + plugins for the product websites.<p>These all communicate mainly through HTTP POST with a few lines of PHP code.<p>I now need to automate some more tasks. I could write the code myself, as I did in the past, but I am not an expert when it comes to web technologies (I have worked almost exclusively on iOS for the past decade) and it would take me ages.<p>So I decided to hire someone on a contract basis to get the job done, but I realized I don&#x27;t know how to proceed.<p>Do I hire a PHP developer? Or it&#x27;s better to use some other language&#x2F;technology? (Python? Ruby?)<p>What I need does not require only code, but also a rudimentary web interface with which I can interact and a database to keep some data.<p>Should I find someone that does both? Or are these separate roles? What about security?<p>How would you proceed?
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codingdave
I'd seek out web generalists, and ask them the same questions you just asked
us. The person you want is the one who can give you good answers.

Personally, I'd stick with PHP because you are on Wordpress. Most of your
architecture is already defined by that choice. Adding or moving to something
newer and shinier will make your system more complex, and ultimately make life
harder for you.

But again, anyone that you would want to hire should be able to tell you that,
so ask them.

