Your Go-to Guide to Hire WordPress Plugin Developer for Your Project

Who is a WordPress developer?

A WordPress developer is responsible for the front-end and back-end development of a WordPress website. Professional WordPress developers are capable of building custom plugins or WordPress themes and have expertise in programming languages and technologies like HTML5, PHP, JavaScript, and CSS3. They also have a good understanding of the overall website aesthetics, including on-screen element arrangements, font selections, colors, and several others.

A WordPress developer should also have a solid understanding of the latest trends in the industry, and be conversant with modern content management systems. Beyond these critical mentions, when you hire a WordPress plugin developer, the candidate needs to be an expert at designing and implementing new website features and functionalities, while establishing and guiding a website’s overall architecture.

They are capable of managing all technical aspects of the content management system while ensuring high-level performance and user availability. The developer should know how to formulate a responsive, effective design and turn it into a working theme or plugin.

Let’s look into some key characteristics to help you decide whether to hire a WordPress plugin developer passes off as the best solution for your needs.

Critical reasons to hire a WordPress theme developer

The internet comprises resources, courses, and even forums to learn WordPress web development to gain the skills and build your website yourself but there still is a whole lot of benefit when you go for professional WordPress plugin development and hire a WordPress theme developer who is experienced in the field.

If you’re looking to go for WordPress plugin development, you either fall into one of these three categories:

• Good budget but limited time to learn new skills or perform the work
• You have basic web development skills but need help with more complicated development work or standby support
• You need to delegate a specific task requiring a particular skill set, etc.

If you are managing a business, extremely busy with other engagements, or just needs someone to help out with the more technical side of WordPress, it makes sense to go for a professional WordPress plugin development.

Even when you decide to hire a WordPress theme developer or outsource your WordPress custom plugin development project, you must do it with caution. This is because you will essentially be trusting this person with your website and potentially a whole lot of information about you or your customers and clients.

Not sure what to look for when you hire for a WordPress theme and plugin development? Let’s talk about that next.

Advantages of hiring for a professional WordPress plugin development

• Eliminate the need to learn the ins and outs of WordPress
• The developer will be able to add custom functionality to your site, which is useful if you need unique features and options.
• Your experienced developer will know how to get the most out of the platform, meaning your site’s performance will be maximized, increased security, and so on.
• You’ll have a go-to person for the technicalities of making updates, fixing bugs, and many more.

Disadvantages of hiring a WordPress plugin developer

• Hiring a developer can be an expensive endeavor, ranging anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on your requirements.
• You’ll be more reliant on the developer to manage and maintain your site.
• If you make a poor choice of developer, you can end up with an inferior result
• You may not always need a developer, particularly if your vision for the site is simple and straightforward.

While these are all crucial factors, the two essentials are budget and complexity. If you don’t have sufficient resources, and also don’t require any custom functionality, consider going for a very low-budget option.

On the other hand, if there’s a high budget and you require a site customized to specific needs, you will definitely benefit from a professional WordPress theme and plugin development.

What to look for to hire a WordPress plugin developer

As the world rapidly moves its presence online, so does the workforce. Thousands of developers share their portfolios online along with hundreds of agencies, platforms, and companies that offer hiring services. But the question still remains as to how you sort through and narrow down your choice. What are the actual skills, credentials, and background that you’ll need to consider to make the right hiring decision?

Before we delve into answering those questions, keep in mind that you’ll still need to play a key role during the website building process. Ultimately, you will have to spend a little bit of your time evaluating the work, making sure everything runs as expected. Things to look out for can comprise:

Soft skills

As important as any technical know-how is, soft skills are just as necessary. You don’t want to end up bringing someone onboard who doesn’t match your passion and creative style. You would want to hire a WordPress plugin developer that you can work with, share your creative style with, and most of all can deliver what is asked.

Consider these few soft skills when you hire a WordPress plugin developer:

• Excellent communication skills – You need to be able to communicate to this person productively. Whether in-person, over a phone or video conference call where you can share your screen or show them exactly what you want to achieve. In the absence of these, you at least want to hire a WordPress plugin developer who is reachable via chat or email and also responsive. Know that there is a difference between being able to talk and communicating effectively.
• Keen attention to detail – This is another skill that’s worth keeping in mind for obvious reasons. Your developer needs to be highly attentive to detail and capable of identifying mistakes that you may miss.
• Ability to meet deadlines in a timely fashion – You want to hire WordPress plugin developers who can meet reasonable deadlines set. Ideally, it is necessary to go for a professional WordPress custom plugin development by hiring someone who can anticipate these problems as much as possible and set the right expectations for you. As the employer, it’s also a call to be thoughtful when dealing with deadlines, especially if you’re not so conversant with the development.
• Confidence and Independence – Someone who is confident with their skills and experience would know what to do when things go south. You would need to hire a WordPress plugin developer who can confidently point out if your requests are realistic or not, instead of being a “Yes” person and then not delivering at the end of the day. Also, ensure that they are able to make decisions based on their experience as to what’s best to proceed with, in the instance that you’re not available.

After reading through, you might think that you’re ready to proceed to hire a WordPress plugin developer but there’s still a lot more than just soft skills.

Technical & Coding Skills

When it comes down to the point of hiring WordPress plugin developers, they must have a specific technical skillset. Most WordPress developers proceed with their learning curve by working on personal projects. They upskill throughout the years by taking courses and learning new programming languages and the latest development processes from the vast jobs they’ve worked on.

An experienced WordPress developer should have:

• Proficiency in technologies like CSS3, HTML5, jQuery and JavaScript
• Competency in building website user interfaces and/or applications
• Experience in developing and designing fully responsive websites
• Good understanding of debugging tools such as Chrome Inspector and Firebug
• Ability to comprehend changes in CSS to ensure a consistent style and usability across all browsers and platforms
• Expertise in converting layouts and wireframes into functional HTML pages
• Extensive expertise in RESTful APIs and formats like JSON and XML
• In-depth knowledge of code versioning tools, like SVN, Mercurial, and Git
• Good understanding of all back-end development in PHP
• Demonstrable experience with various WordPress page builder themes or plugins
• Prolific use of WordPress plugins to use to accomplish certain features
• Foundational knowledge of basic WordPress security best practices and WordPress maintenance, including WordPress backups and updates

Expertise, Background, Portfolio and References

While you’re on the look out to hire WordPress plugin developers, you can’t just hire anybody who claims they know WordPress. It will be a good practice to also consider their background.

However, since web development can literally be learned entirely online, educational background may or may may not be a factor when looking for a WordPress developer, but it’s benefitial to check for extra points.

Aside from that, you should examine the developer’s specific area of expertise. You might need someone who has a particular skill for for design, troubleshooting, etc., in addition to the web development. You have to be specific enough to list down where exactly the developer would come in and if their expertise matches your requirements.

It is also in your best interest to ask for a portfolio or similarly a list of websites that they’ve managed or built previously. Especially for big projects where the budget is both huge and tight, you want to ensure that they are capable to take on such a task.

Finally, references. You should have a way to vet their portfolio. Either request for names and emails of previous employers or carry out a quick background assessment. Apply caution to verify all the information that you are given. It will ultimately yield good value in future.

Cost, Budget, Pay expectations and Availability

Considering a big organization or just an individual looking for help, it’s always wise to communicate effectively with your candidates about their pay expectations. Aim for an average, although, depending on your requirements. Do not also hesitate to be a little bit more generous when you hire a WordPress plugin developer with a specific advanced skill set and years of experience.

You may get multiple applications that may seem like the perfect choice, i.e., cheap and experienced, but consider the end result. Working with extreme care while vetting, trusting your instincts, and open communication is the key especially when it now has to do with money.

Don’t forget to agree on a schedule or time zone overlap when the work must be done. Time zones are a thing, and can often cause work complications. Endeavour to also research on the estimated budget required for the project to make sure you have enough.

Hiring a WordPress plugin developer can be simple

Now that you know the right questions to ask and the expectations you should have, you’re well on your way to find and hire the perfect WordPress plugin developer for your upcoming projects. Fortunately, it isn’t a difficult task to hire a WordPress plugin developer. There are a lot of knowledgeable and reliable platforms to help out. One of such is Turing, a data-science-driven deep jobs platform helping companies to scale their engineering teams. Turing operates by leveraging an Intelligent Talent Cloud and AI to source, vet, match, and manage millions of developers globally.

Currently, companies are in a competition to reap the benefits of remote engineering talent. Turing is here to assist you to hire a WordPress plugin developer, thereby making remote development easy, compliant, and secure. Head on to Turing.com today and hire remote developers within 3-5 days, saving up to 50+ hours of engineering team time on interviewing.