How to work effectively with WordPress Experts
codeable.io
codeable.io
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.
"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). "
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.
Do you have any tips related to WordPress I should add to my list? If so, let me know :)
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.