If you’re considering hiring a WordPress developer, it’s very important to find someone who can do the job well. Although WordPress is becoming increasingly easy to use as time goes on, there are still many aspects of the system that are confusing and require technical knowledge in order to set up or customize. When choosing a WordPress developer, here are the top five most important things you should know.
1) WordPress developer should be familiar with PHP, HTML, and CSS
WordPress is built with PHP, HTML, and CSS. These technologies comprise much of what makes up a website’s code. As such, WordPress developers should be at least moderately familiar with these three languages. The more comfortable you are with them, the better your developer will be able to support you in managing your site.
2) WordPress developer should know how to install a theme
A professional developer should be able to set up your WordPress site quickly and easily by installing a theme. Themes include not only designs, but also all of the customizations that will make your site unique. Make sure you look for an experienced developer who knows what they’re doing, rather than a less expensive coder or developer that lacks experience in actually working with clients and customers.
3) WordPress developer should know how to optimize your site for speed
Speed is an important consideration when it comes to your site’s design. Search engines like Google recognize sites that load quickly as having high-quality content, and they will reward them with higher search engine rankings. There are a number of factors that contribute to website speed, including database queries, file size, image size and more. Here are five tips on how you can optimize your site for speed.
4) WordPress developer should understand the basics of SEO
To create a website that receives as much traffic as possible, you need to ensure that Google can actually find it. A developer who understands search engine optimization (SEO) will design your site in such a way that Google’s algorithms deem it worthy of higher placement on SERPs. The end result? More traffic, naturally. It’s simple—the more relevant and useful content your site has, and the easier it is for people to find, then more people will use your services or buy from you!
5) WordPress developer should be able to help you with server configuration issues
A lot of people with websites based on WordPress don’t realize that it isn’t enough to just install it on your site and let it run. They also need to be sure their server is set up correctly, or they’ll get a lot of errors in their logs, which can lead to downtime. On top of that, many hosting companies don’t even provide access to good error logs for you to see what’s going wrong with your installation.