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WordPress is a content management system or CMS that needs no introduction. It powers around 810 million (43%) of the websites used globally, so if you are looking to build a world-class website, you will need to hire WordPress developers.
But where can you find and hire WordPress developers in 2024?
It goes without saying that the developers you choose will have a big impact on the success of your project. That’s why you need to hire a WordPress developer with the right skills and experience for your specific project requirements.
So to answer the question above very simply; unless you are building a simple ‘hobby’ project, we cannot emphasis the importance of avoiding freelacers and hiring from a dedicated software development company like DevTeam.Space.
Sure, you might save a few dollars upfront by hiring cheap freelancers but the costs of picking up a failing project after you find out they don’t have the skills or bandwidth to build your project properly and according to your time constraints.
If you want to save time and jump straight to hiring the best developers for your project then get in touch to arrange a complimentary discovery call.
It only takes 3 minutes (yes, we timbed it) to send us a few details via our project specification form and one of our account managers will be in touch to answer any questions that you might have.
Now, let’s get into a detailed version of how to go about hiring WordPress developers.
Who Needs to Hire Top WordPress Developers?
If you’re thinking of using WordPress to build an online presence, you’re going to need to hire WordPress developers with the ability to make it happen. You might be able to whip up an acceptable looking website by yourself by following a few online tutorials, but building a user friendly, secure, and scalable WordPress application demands talent and experience. This guide is for:
- Startup founders and entrepreneurs building a new online business idea.
- Enterprise executives looking to streamline online operations.
- Anyone wanting to improve their current WordPress setup.
WordPress: A Super-Tool that Demands Super-Developers
WordPress is unique in the website development world. No other platform is used by such a wide variety of organizations. The New Yorker, Sony Music, and even the Swedish government use it to power their websites. The reason is simple; it allows anyone with the right skills to create world-class prototype web applications.
The real strengths of the WordPress platform are its:
- Thousands of themes, plugins, tools, and templates
- Vibrant community
- Ease-of-use
- Easy extensibility
- Scalability.
Top WordPress developers will be able to build you a minimum viable product (MVP) in no time, integrate any custom features you want, and quickly scale it up for your (hopefully) growing user base. This will save you money in the short term while helping you massively increase your earnings in the longer term.
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The Difficulties of Finding WordPress Developers For Hire
Custom website development is no easy thing. This is why you need to use the right tools, management, and the best WordPress developers who know their stuff.
When trying to find a new developer, you might choose to post your project to a freelance platform. Whatever you post, the response will be a tidal wave of applications promising top-quality work for low per-hour rates. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is.
Verifying qualifications on such platforms is difficult and extremely time consuming. Another problem is that WordPress makes creating reasonable looking websites a piece of cake, meaning everyone has a great portfolio. It can be hard to tell who is capable of making your vision a reality, and who has just used a few nice looking templates and is passing off the work as their own.
How this Interviewing Guide Will Help
We will start by examining what separates junior programmers from the experts, and what makes a great development team. Then we’ll go through a step-by-step process that you can use to find the best developers.
Naturally, you want to identify the top developers without spending too much time and money. The objectives are to:
- Weed out the unskilled as quickly as possible.
- Uncover real breadth and depth of understanding – not just knowledge.
- Avoid boring good developers with a tedious interview process. Rather, we want to attract talent by presenting your project as something great to work on.
What Separates WordPress Experts from the Rest
Hiring a cheap $20-per-hour freelance programmer with a good-looking portfolio might seem like a good idea now, but it can turn out to be an expensive mistake. Some junior developers charge rock-bottom rates, but hiring them presents risks. Junior developers may:
- Have a limited skillset
- Take far too long to do the required tasks
- Fail to understand what you mean
- Struggle to communicate effectively
- Try to cover up mistakes
- Make expensive mistakes that only reveal themselves later
- Struggle to solve problems unique to your business
- Not have the experience or insight to make helpful suggestions.
Expert WordPress developers won’t have these problems. However, “expertise” or “seniority” can’t just be measured in qualifications and years of experience.
There are many qualified developers with 10+ years of experience who won’t do a lot better than a junior developer due to their lack of motivation and ‘know it all’ attitude.
The first place to start to hire the right WordPress developer to build your application is ‘developer skills’.
Essential WordPress Web Developer Skills
Here are the indicators of top-level WordPress web developers. Please note that this is a generalized list as we don’t know your specific project requirements. If you need more details then get in touch.
1. Breadth and Depth of Technical Skills
The minimum requirement for any developer or software engineer is a good technical skill set and a reasonable understanding of the industry that they have been asked to build a website for.
The essential technical skills are:
Basic Skills:
- Web development skills including PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, and JavaScript
- An understanding of how the WordPress core works
- Knowledge of WordPress hosting
- Familiarity with post types and WordPress taxonomies
- Knowledge of popular themes and plugins
- The ability to integrate the WordPress website with social media platforms.
More Advanced Skills:
- Modifying and designing custom themes
- Extending WordPress with custom plugins
- Using the WordPress API
- Using scalable cloud hosting
- User interface design
- Optimizing for better load times and performance
- Search engine optimization
- Setting up analytics and customer behavior tracking
- Web security
- Mastery of the underlying concepts and how all of these things come together.
If they have these essencials then this person will be able to set up a basic website and add features such as payment gateways, etc. One WordPress developer will do in such circumstances.
For complex projects, however, it’s best to go with a development team or WordPress development company that includes multiple specialists. It might sound like a big step, but a small team can do the same work in a fraction of the time and can ‘cross-skill’ to help each other find the best solutions to problems, something which can save you a great deal of time and money.
Perhaps the most important skill for WordPress development is knowing exactly how best to leverage all of the available tools, plugins, and templates.
This will slash development time further. Your dev team might be able to build you a cool eCommerce plugin, for example, but it’s pointless if there is already one available.
For WordPress, technical prowess leads to faster load times, tighter security, fewer plugin problems, better reliability, less downtime, better user experience, and fewer maintenance headaches.
2. Communication and “Soft” Skills
Soft skills like communication and attitude are just as important as hard skills. A dedicated WordPress developer has great:
- Communication
- Adaptability
- Teamwork
- Attitude
- Work ethic
- Common sense and decision making
- Critical thinking
- Ego management
Check out this article on developer soft skills for more details.
3. Armed with an Understanding of How Your Online Business Works.
WordPress developers can have a big influence on how your online business operates. Experts know this and keep their strategic skills up-to-date along with their technical ones. This includes things like:
- Anticipating possible problems and performance bottlenecks
- Future scalability
- Efficient use of cloud computing resources
- Optimizing for Google and other search engines
- Improving user experience
- Thinking of creative solutions that make potential problems disappear.
Tips for non-technical people:
An expert developer will have these qualities:
- The ability to simply relate their technical skills and requirements to you. They can explain to you in simple language why a certain programming language, tool, or plugin is the right choice.
- They are easy to communicate with. You shouldn’t have to repeat yourself or be forced to keep asking for explanations and clarifications.
- They understand your project vision and your business. They don’t need their hand held along the way. Also, they care about long-term goals. They offer helpful suggestions and insights and can anticipate problems such as roadblocks, etc.
What Makes an Expert WordPress Dev Team?
If you want more than just a basic WordPress website, it’s a good idea to go with a professional dev team rather than an individual.
There are lots of companies offering WordPress development services out there. Once again, lots of research and making sure to ask the right questions are the key to finding the right team.
Here are some of the factors to look out for:
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1. They Work Seamlessly as a Unit
Just like a great sports team, functioning as a coherent unit and following a strong gameplan is much more important than having a team of individual superstars.
Everyone needs to know their place in the team. Strong leadership and a clear team structure will ensure that top quality work is delivered consistently. Good teams may have one or two junior developers, but their limitations should be understood to ensure that they produce great code quality.
2. They Have Great Internal and External Communication
Good internal communication means that developers talk to each other, and always know who is working on what. External communication relates to the management and client (when applicable). Remember, as the manager or client, you should always be in the loop. This includes things like:
- Who’s working on what
- Who’s responsible
- What’s been completed
- Current progress and deadlines
- Budget management
3. They Have a Positive Team Culture.
Oversized egos can make a team of otherwise competent developers crash and burn. Blaming each other for mistakes, passing the buck, competitiveness, and arguing – all of these things are a waste of everyone’s time and often lead to failed projects.
A team’s culture should be based on honest communication, helping each other out, and collaborating towards success.
Working with a Team vs an Individual Freelancer
Working with an individual developer is a popular approach. For a small scale project, it keeps things simple. However, when projects get larger than a simple setup, you’re probably going to need a team.
Working with an individual can be risky, especially for larger or enterprise projects. After all, you are putting the fate of your entire project in the hands of one person. A team is more likely to have the depth of knowledge to make your project successful. A typical WordPress team should have UX, backend, mobile, API, and SEO specialists – making it more likely you’ll get quality code.
Another major aspect is development speed. A team of three developers can probably do the work of 1/3 of the time.
That means they bill you for the same number of hours, but things get done three times as fast. This is particularly important when scaling. A team can also spend more time on your project at key times. A single developer can become a bottleneck.
Tips for interviewing professional WordPress developers
We recommend the following best practices when interviewing WordPress professionals:
A. Look for experience in developing WordPress themes and plugins
You want a developer with experience in WordPress theme development. You also want WordPress plugin development experience.
Such developers have much more skills and experience than average WordPress developers. Custom theme development can be complex, which is also true for plugin development.
Needless to say, you need to pay more than the average WordPress developer salary. The higher costs are worth though.
Expert developers have wider exposure to web development services. They help in debugging and web application security, and we will talk about that shortly.
B. Look for debugging experience
You need to prioritize debugging skills and experience. Many WordPress projects can be complex. They require much more than just designing WordPress sites with a great look and feel.
Programmers need in-depth PHP skills when debugging WordPress websites. Quality WordPress developers also have considerable MySQL skills. Even more important is the experience in debugging complex WordPress websites.
You could find it hard to assess debugging skills when you interview remote WordPress developers. You might face the same challenge with freelance WordPress developers.
This is why you should hire WordPress developers from dedicated software development companies like DevTeam.Space. DevTeam.Space follows a stringent screening process when hiring each and everyone of its developers.
C. Assess the skills and experience in preventing security issues
We talked about web security earlier, however, we can’t restate its importance enough! WordPress is popular. However, hackers routinely target it. Hire a WordPress developer that can prevent web security issues.
Expert WordPress developers should check all the themes and plugins they use for security loopholes. They should also check the application security aspects when customizing themes and plugins. Developers should have experience in resolving issues found in security and compliance testing.
It’s not enough to write this point when you put up the requirements on a job board. You need to evaluate this aspect keenly when hiring WordPress developers. Ask for project references and evaluate those WordPress sites.
Interview Questions and Answers to Identify Top-Level Developers
Your interview processes should be done in stages. Due to the time this takes, there is no way you can comprehensively interview dozens of developers for a position. That’s why each stage is designed to cut down your candidate pool so you have more time per developer on the next stage.
- Basic screening stage – Finding the developers who meet the minimum requirements
- In-depth technical knowledge and ability – Pinpointing developers who can really understand your unique challenges
- Strategic knowledge – Homing in on the best WordPress developers who can help take your business to the next level
Step 1: Basic Screening Stage
The first stage is about removing unqualified candidates in an efficient way. The questions should be to do with logistics such as minimum experience, location, rates, and language requirements.
Example Questions:
- How well do you speak English (or whatever language you need)? 1 – 10
- How well do you write in English? 1 – 10
- How many years of experience do you have with WordPress?
- Do you have any examples of a WordPress website you have built?
- How many WordPress projects have you worked on?
- Are you familiar with (specific technology, e.g. AWS)
- Where are you based?
- Are you planning to work part-time?
Questions for Teams:
- Who will I be communicating with?
- What project management tool do you use? What access will I have?
- Do you use Agile?
- How well does your contact person speak English?
- How well do your developers chat in English?
- Are you a full-stack dev team (means you have both very strong backend engineers and very strong frontend developers)?
- Number of people on the team who have more than 3 years of frontend experience?
After that, you can start with the technical questions. They can be simple or complex questions, but they must have a right or wrong answer.
Example WordPress Technical Questions:
Q: Name the two types of hooks in WordPress
A: Action hooks and filter hooks Example of a filter hook
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<?php add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘head_func’ );
function head_func( $content ) {
if ( is_single() ) {
$content .= ‘Filter hook example’ . ” “;
}
return $content;
}
?>Q: Add the minimum required header for this plugin called “My hello world plugin”
<?php
add_filter('the_content', 'hello_world');
function hello_world($content){
return $content . "<h1> Hello World </h1>";
}
?>A:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: My hello world plugin
*/
add_filter('the_content', 'hello_world');
function hello_world($content){
return $content . "<h1> Hello World </h1>";
}
?>Write an improved version of this WordPress function using the $wpdb variable
<?php
Write an improvedfunction perform_database_action(){
mysql_query(“INSERT into table_name (col1, col2, col3)
VALUES ('$value1','$value2', '$value3');
}
?>A:
<?php
function perform_database_action(){
global $wpdb;
$data= array('col1'=>$value1,'col2'=>$value2,'col3'=>$value3);
$format = array('%s','%s','%s');
$wpdb->insert('table_name', $data, $format);
}
?>For the first questions, you need to work out what “incorrect” is based on your requirements, i.e. a minimum English proficiency, minimum number of years experience, etc.
The questions shouldn’t take too much time for good developers, but don’t make the quiz too long. You don’t want to bore your best candidates. Anyone who fails the compulsory questions or to get an overall minimum score should be removed from your shortlist.
If you’re doing a lot of interviews, you can also try to automate this stage with an automated online form.
Step 2: In-depth Technical Knowledge and Ability
This is where you are going to find out which of the candidates left on your list are actually talented developers.
Asking difficult technical questions doesn’t really help you distinguish between experienced developers and those who have just finished studying and have the information fresh in their minds.
The best way to do this is with open-ended questions to complex problems – preferably to do with your specific project.
Give a complex scenario and ask them how they would best approach it. The less time you give them to prepare answers, the better. Use a variety of questions, including ones on the development processes, timeframes, technologies they’ll need for the project.
Example Questions:
- What steps do you take to make sure a product is scalable?
- What are the most important things you think about when designing a user interface?
- How long would it take you to get an MVP for this project? Give me a breakdown of the components
- We need a plugin to do (example). How might you start coding something like this?
- Describe how you would go about setting up services/configurations to perform an action on the database once a day? What are some things you would take into account when deciding the time of day?
- How does a WordPress API work? What can it be used for?
- How have you improved page load times before?
- Briefly describe how the WooCommerce plugin works?
- What’s the best theme available? Show an example of where you have used it on a project
- Have you ever undertaken theme development or theme customization?
- What plugin development have you undertaken?
- Do you have any WordPress themes or plugins published in the WordPress directory?
There are no definitive answers to these questions. The idea is to expose how a developer approaches problems as well as the depth of their knowledge. When you get answers like this from multiple developers, the top-level developers quickly stand out. Their answers will make the most sense.
Asking for some code examples is a good idea too. We strongly recommend that you have an expert who is able to review the code thoroughly. If you don’t know anybody, get in touch and we can help you.
Step 3: Strategic Knowledge
You’ve cut down your list to the best two or three WordPress programmers. All of them meet your minimum requirements, and all of them have the ability to get your project done. Now it’s time to find the one who is going to deliver your business the most value.
This part of the interview should ideally be done via video chat, or at least on a live message chat. The questions will be open-ended and the interaction should be very relaxed. You can ask questions on:
- SEO strategy
- Future forecasts
- Technology choices
- Building custom themes, plugins, etc
- Different tools to use
- How to cut current costs / streamline processes
- Content strategy
- Past WordPress jobs
Example Questions:
- How would you use cloud infrastructure to make a WordPress site more scalable? What platform would you use and why?
- Describe how you’ve used Search Engine Optimization in a past WordPress site
- Describe the technologies you would use to complete this project. What are the tradeoffs involved in using them?
- What value do you think my customers will get out of this project?
- What tools are currently popular in the WordPress ecosystem? How are they providing value?
Interviewing Teams
The process will be slightly different for teams. Once a team has passed your minimum requirements test and technical skills, you will want to test how they communicate with you so you establish how communication will work during your project.
Getting the team on a group chat or call for an interview will give you an insight into how they operate. If you ask a question about a specific topic, the team member that has the best knowledge in that area should lead the response – with other team members chipping in where necessary.
You are looking for the qualities we talked about in the dev teams section – working as a unit, good communication with you and each other, and a positive team culture.
Submit a Project With Zero Risk
WordPress truly is an amazing CMS. With the right developers, it can be used to build some amazing websites.
With the knowledge and interview structure discussed above, you’ll be able to secure the services of the talented developers you need for your project quickly and with total confidence.
If you want to get access to the best WordPress developers then why not start your search by taking 3 minutes to fill out a DevTeam.Space product specification form?
Once you have done so, one of our dedicated account managers will be in touch to answer any questions that you might have.
