While it’s true that hiring a WordPress developer is easy & affordable because of their abundance, but it’s equally important to check their personal & technical skills before going ahead.
In this post, I’ve prepared a checklist of 7 important skills that you must look out for in your WordPress developer.
#1 HTML & CSS skills
HTML is perhaps the bare minimum skill that every WordPress must have. Anybody can download and install a WordPress setup using intuitive Cpanel interface, but in order to make some changes, your developer must know HTML tags/codes.
CSS is responsible for giving a nice look to your website and therefore your WordPress developer must possess this skill as well. In the absence of required CSS skills, your web developer may leave you with a compromised website design.
#2 Coding skills
WordPress website development is not just about installing & activating the plugins and theme.
Sometimes, the default features of a plugin may not suit your business requirements and in this case your developer must know how to customize the plugin.
In other words, your WordPress developer must possess coding skills in order to make necessary tweaks in order to match your expected outcome.
#3 Visualisation skills
Now this is something most of the WordPress developers don’t have. You can easily find developers who are masters in coding & programming, but very few of them have great visualization skills.
Not all of the WordPress programmers build presentable websites.
But the question is “How to check the visualization skills of any developer?”
The simple answer to the above question is “By checking their past works”.
Yes, before you hire a WordPress developer in Singapore, you must ensure to check their previous works in order to analyze the quality of their visualization.
#4 SEO skills
One of the major reasons to build any website is to get traffic on it. And when we talk about relevant traffic, SEO (search engine optimization) is considered as one of the most effective yet affordable mediums.
SEO starts from the website itself. It’s said that well-optimized website is half SEO battle won. Therefore, it makes complete sense to check the SEO knowledge of your WordPress developer before hiring him.
There are several ways a WordPress developer can help you build an SEO-friendly website. Some of them are mentioned below:
- Choosing SEO-friendly theme
- Installing SEO plugins like Yoast SEO
- Creating a blog section
- Integrating proper header tags on all the web pages
- Integrating meta tags for each webpage
Recommended post: 5 Ways in which a WordPress developer can help you in SEO
#5 Security know how
Security has become a major concern for all the webmasters today. Especially, when you choose a popular CMS like WordPress, taking care of security becomes essential.
Does your website builder knows how to secure a WordPress website?
Here are but few ways in which your WordPress developer can protect your website from most of the potential threats:
- Changing the conventional pattern of defining username and link of admin login.
- Careful selection of all the plugins.
- Updating themes & plugins regularly, if you’ve engaged your developer for maintenance.
- Protecting the access of some of the important files on the server.
- Disabling all the unnecessary themes & plugins.
Recommended post: 10 Ways to secure a WordPress website from malicious codes and hackers
#6 API integration skills
Do you need to integrate any 3rd party services with your WordPress website? If yes, then you must ensure that your developer knows API Integration too.
Only skilled & experienced developers can work with APIs.
#7 Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting is an integral part of any website development because errors & bugs can arise anytime.
Does your developer know only to build new websites or he knows troubleshooting of errors on the existing websites as well?
Refrain from hiring developers who just know installing & activating the plugins and don’t have any experience in bugs fixing. These kind of novice developers can disappoint you down-the-road.
In other words, you must hire only those developers who can fix WordPress errors on your website too.