23 Questions to Ask a WordPress Developer Before Hiring in 2024

WordPress is presently the biggest CMS (Content Management System) out there. Approximately 25% of the total websites are based on the WordPress platform.

If you are planning to develop a new website for your business or online shopping store, you should definitely give WordPress a chance.

And if you have already decided to do so, now is the time to start looking for a good and reliable WordPress developer or development company to do the job.

Questions to ask a WordPress developer before hiring:

So, you have decided that you want a website in WordPress. What next?

How do you plan to find the right WordPress developer/programmer?

How will you check their credibility?

How can you trust them when you don’t even know them?

And what about their knowledge and experience?

What if you hire a developer but later on realize that he/she is not the one you were looking for?

The most obvious solution is to these questions to ask a WordPress developer before hiring them.

Absolutely Necessary Questions to Ask a WordPress Developer

Make sure to ask yourself these questions before hiring a WordPress developer, and hire only if you are satisfied with their answers.

Q. 1. How many years of experience do you have in developing WordPress solutions?

Experience is one thing that matters even more than knowledge and skills. As they say, practice makes perfect. Make sure that your potential developer has practiced enough with different WordPress solutions, especially the kind you need to develop.

If you are planning to hire a WordPress development company, make sure to ask about the experience of the developer/s who will be working on your project.

Ideally, you should hire a WordPress developer or company having a minimum of 3 to 4 years of experience in a variety of WordPress solutions.

Q. 2. What do you expect me to provide?

You, as the owner, are as much a part of website development as the developer himself. If you think your job ends with finding a good web developer, you should think again.

Your web developer will need many things from you including your time. So, you should definitely ask this question when interviewing him. The answer will usually include the following points.

The basic and detailed idea of the website, your requirements, and your vision or goal with the website.

• Advance payment
• Website content, images, and other data.
• Domain and web hosting details
• Terms & conditions (or signing the contract agreement)

Q. 3. What is the cost of development?

After explaining your project to the developer, you should ask them about the estimated cost of development.

The cost of a WordPress website depends on a number of things, such as theme creation/purchase, requirements, plugins, integrations, etc.

The developer will analyze all these things and give you an estimate or exact cost of the project accordingly.

You can then decide to continue with them or go with someone else as per your budget.

Q. 4. Will you create a new theme or use an existing one for my website development?

This normally depends on your choice. Most WordPress firms and/or developers would be willing to create a new WordPress theme for your project from scratch.

There are usually three options for this,

• You can use an existing theme
• Get one created from scratch
• Customize an existing theme according to your needs

The developer can also suggest to you the best option. Remember, the cost of the project may vary depending on your choice of theme.

Q. 5. What procedure do you follow to develop a WordPress site?

It will be more or less the same for all developers. They first analyze your requirements, then build a development plan, show it to you, choose a theme, and get the development process started.

Make sure that they also have a testing phase to analyze the quality of the final product.

Q. 6. What about Web Design and other things?

The development of a complete site is a multi-step process and requires multiple persons including a designer, developer, tester, content creator, and others.

Make sure to consider this before you begin hiring. You can hire a web development company if you are looking for a complete team and resources in one place.

Q. 7. Will you build my website with a responsive feature?

This is one of the most important questions to ask your WordPress developer. It is crucial that your website is mobile-responsive if you wish to utilize the traffic coming from mobile devices.

More and more users are moving to the mobile platform for performing basic searches and browsing tasks.

Even though many WordPress themes are responsive, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your website will also be responsive. So, make sure to ask.

Q. 8. Do I get complete ownership of my website?

Before hiring a developer or a company for the website development task, you must make sure that you get 100% ownership of the website once it is completed and you’ve paid for it. You need to ask for the following accesses:

• FTP access
• WP Admin access
• Database access
• Domain and DNS settings access

Even if you may not need any of this information, later on, you should have the right to own it.

Q. 9. Can do develop or add custom plugins to my WordPress site?

A professional WordPress developer should be able to create custom plugins and integrations for WordPress.

If you need any custom features for your website, you must ask your developer whether it will do with an existing plugin or will require developing one from scratch. The cost of the same must also be conveyed to you.

Q. 10. What kind of security will my website have?

It is important for all online websites to have some kind of security mechanism to protect them against hack, errors, bugs, content protection, etc.

Although WordPress has its own security mechanism that will enable security for your site, you still need to ask your developer about the advanced security measures he/she can implement to ensure the added security of your website data and applications.

Q. 11. Will you optimize my website for SEO or Search Results?

The ultimate purpose of a website is to get traffic and generate leads that convert. This is not possible if your website is not optimized for search engines.

WordPress itself is an SEO-friendly platform and gives you ample opportunities including several plugins to enhance the search compatibility of your site.

Make sure that your WordPress developer knows that and implements proper techniques for the on-page optimization of your site.

Later on, you can hire a good SEO company for improved search engine ranking results.

Q. 12. How can you make it easier for me to manage my website?

This is an important question to ask, especially for business owners who don’t know much about WordPress.

Although WordPress is one of the simplest content management systems, you’ll still need some basic knowledge of it in order to work properly.

Make sure to tell your developer the same and ask if he can make the management tasks easier somehow.

They can make use of existing plugins and widgets to make things easier for you.

Q. 13. Can I convert my WordPress site into an eCommerce store or add more functionalities/features to it in the future?

You must confirm with your developer that your website will be extensible in case you want to add more features and functionalities to it in the future.

A WordPress website can be easily converted into an online shopping store with the use of the WooCommerce plugin but you still need to confirm the same with your developer.

And if you need an e-commerce website right now, make sure to convey this to your developer or e-commerce development company.

Q. 14. How long will it take to develop the website?

If it is a single developer developing your site, he/she might easily take over a month to build it.

A WordPress development company or team of developers, however, can get you the product much sooner.

Make sure to ask for an estimated time or convey a deadline when outsourcing the development task to someone.

Q. 15. What if I do not like the final product? Will you make changes to it?

This is also an important question to ask. It is not very likely that you will love the project the first time itself, and even if you like the website, it might still require some changes and/or updations.

Your developer or development company must be willing to make the necessary changes as and when required after the product is delivered to you.

Also, confirm with your developer whether these changes will be free of cost or not.

Q. 16. Is WordPress the right choice for my website development?

This should be one of the very first questions to ask WordPress developers, but I am assuming that you have already researched some if you chose WordPress as your website development platform.

Nevertheless, you should confirm with the developer if you made the right choice.

They clearly know more about the various platforms being used for web development and can suggest better.

Q. 17. Will you provide after-support, updates, and maintenance?

A website needs regular maintenance which includes testing its code, refreshing the website content, testing for bugs and errors, updating plugins and WordPress to the latest version, etc.

Even if you can do these things yourself, you should make sure that the development company also offers such services including the after-support service in case you ever face a problem with the website.

Q. 18. Do you also provide domain and web hosting services?

The website and hosting go hand in hand. If you are developing a website, you will also have to purchase a domain (which works as the address for your website) and web hosting (which is the online space/place where your site is hosted) plan for the website to work.

Most development companies provide domain and hosting services along with web development services. You need to ask your WordPress developer if he/she provides such services and if it is included in the cost.

Q. 19. Will there be a backup and restore feature on my WordPress site?

Backups are very important for disaster situations when you accidentally lose any important website data or delete your website or a database by mistake or if your website is hacked.

WordPress has an inbuilt mechanism for automatic backups. Make sure that your developer enables the same or implements one for your website. Ask him if there is any other way to ensure data safety, backup, and security.

Q. 20. How will I communicate with you?

In order for the development process to work smoothly, you need to be able to communicate with the developer easily.

Ask him/her or your development company for multiple contact options so that you can reach them whenever necessary.

This is also a nice way to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of the company/developer.

Q. 21. Will the WordPress website developed by you load fast? 

84% of the visitors leave a particular website within 3 seconds on the internet. So, if your WordPress website is slow to load, you will lose qualified leads, traffic, and the opportunity to make profits online.

Also, to rank high on search engines, speed matters. Due to laziness, often WordPress developers shy away from writing a few lines of code and rely heavily on various plug-ins for high page speed.

Hence, before hiring a WordPress developer, always ask him about the site/page speed.

Q. 22. Do you adhere to WordPress coding standards?

A good WordPress developer is always someone who follows or has a very good idea about WordPress Coding Standards. The knowledge of WordPress coding standards is great for avoiding any coding errors during development.

It also helps developers to code cleanly, and semantically and builds the site following best practices. Ask the same question before you recruit a WordPress developer.

Q. 23. Will it be scalable in the future?

This question is very important to ask before he/she begins to work on the project. It is because with time and the right effort normally projects start to grow and reach a threshold level after which these projects fail to maintain everything effectively. That’s where businesses and owners think about scaling up the project. Thus if your project is not scalable, then it will be a headache for everyone in the future.

Conclusion

If you want a good and effective WordPress site, you need to give it some to find the right developer for the task. Make sure to ask all these and even more questions when hiring a WordPress developer.

Remember that you are paying them for their services, so you shouldn’t have to deal with poor-quality service.