Tips to hire a WordPress developer for your next project

by JONATHAN PAUL Jonathan Paul working at PHPProgrammers, a leading

One of the most crucial things you need to do to get a responsive, engaging, secure, and customer-friendly WordPress website built is to choose a good WordPress developer. Here are some tips to help you hire a WordPress developer with the right skills and abilities for your next project.

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS platforms that powers nearly 35.2% of the websites out of the total of over 1.7 billion websites running on the internet today.

Despite so many CMS platforms available in the web development market, WordPress has always remained to be the most favoured one, especially among e-commerce businesses. And that's because creating as well as managing a WordPress website is quite easy. All that is needed is a reliable web hosting service provider, the right choice of theme, a few WordPress plugins, and your content.

But above all, to implement all these perfectly, you need an experienced and proficient WordPress developer.

And here are some tips to help you hire a WordPress developer with the must-have skills and abilities you need for your next project.

Considering both the technical and soft skills of the developer is important. For this, you need to carefully assess their portfolios or resumes, test their soft skills by communicating with them or through an interview, and enquire about the WordPress related technical skills, and make sure to consider the cost of development as well.

Go through the resume of the developer first:

When you are hiring a WordPress developer for your project, you may get curious about what to really look for in the resume. First of all, you should look for a diverse range of technical skills related to WordPress development like knowledge of web development languages like PHP as WordPress is based on PHP, database management tools, SEO knowledge, knowledge of the WordPress plugins, themes, and extensions and ability to develop custom themes with WordPress. The developer must also have proficiency in other languages like CSS and HTML to ensure the developer has the ability to create, style, and optimise a WordPress website. SEO knowledge is an added advantage to ensure your website will rank high on the SERPs.

Apart from these, when you are checking the resume, make sure to take a look at the soft skills possessed by the developer like project management skills, excellent communication skills, time management skills, and teamwork ability.

Other than these, you can look for some of the links of their previous works to have a look at the projects to assess the work quality of the developer.

Also, make sure to look for the total number of years of experience in WordPress. The developer must be experienced enough to meet your requirements and expectations making the best use of the platform.

Ask a few important questions while interviewing the developer:

To explore the developer's suitability for your project, here are some questions you can ask while interviewing the professional.

To test the potential technical skills of the developer, ask a series of questions that can help you dive deep into what the developer has put on in the resume. Asking these questions can give you a deeper insight into their attitude and approach to different scenarios while building a WordPress website. Ask questions like:

What is your relevant experience in writing WordPress code?
Which WordPress plugins do you mostly use or do you choose the plugins as per the business requirements? If yes then how do you choose the plugins?
What is a custom theme? Do you know how to create a custom theme with WordPress or do you only use the readymade themes in WordPress?
How do you optimise a WordPress website? , Etc.

Test the technical skills properly:

Testing the technical skills deeply is highly important as many developers simply embellish their resumes with more than what skills and abilities they actually possess. What you can do is check some of their previous works both the coding part and the result or the website after development. While checking their coding, go through their CSS code, PHP code, SQL queries, object-oriented programming part, JavaScript code, HTML code, and how the developer has used the extensions, and plugins and which themes the developer has used for his or her past projects.

Go through the client testimonials:

Make sure to go through the client testimonials before handing over your project to the developer. Ensure the developer's portfolio has positive and satisfactory words from the previous clients. This will ensure you are making a reliable choice.

Don't forget to ask about the cost of development:

You must have a budget and that makes it necessary to talk about the project development pricing with the developer. Once you have discussed your project requirements with the developer, get an estimated pricing for it. This will help you to make a choice within your budget but without compromising on the work quality.

Apart from these, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are also necessary to ensure smooth and efficient development and bug fixing.

Jonathan Paul is a dedicated and proficient WordPress developer associated with the no. 1 WordPress development company in Australia, PHPProgrammers. The author has written this article to help you to hire a WordPress developer possessing all the required skills and abilities.