When you build a WordPress website for your business, you can’t simply shut it and forget it.
You need to maintain your website regularly not only to keep it up-to-date but also to avoid any kind of serious issues such as malware or virus attacks.
What are the benefits of maintaining your website regularly?
- The information on your website would always be up-to-date.
- All the plugins & themes on your website will always be updated.
- Enhanced user experience.
- Optimized website loading speed.
- Protection from different kinds of security threats.
But due to the shortage of time or lack of technical knowledge & resources, most of the website owners never pay attention to their websites.
As a result, their websites start showing functional errors or performance issues. Sometimes even worst, their websites may get hacked.
Don’t let this happen to you.
If you don’t have time to maintain your website regularly, you can also consider hiring a website developer to take care of your website.
Here, in this blog post, I have shared 7 tips for you to choose a website developer for your WordPress website maintenance.
#1 Check out experience
When it comes to hiring a WordPress developer for your website maintenance, experience does matter.
How much experience does your developer have?
Why experience is so important?
- Experienced developers know how to fix any kind of problem on a WordPress website.
- Experienced developers know how to make a WordPress website secure.
- Experienced developers would always take regular backups of your website.
- Experienced developers would always know how to make your website SEO-friendly.
Of course, you can find many affordable developers to build or maintain your website at a lower price, but don’t compromise on experience over the cost.
#2 Settle on a turnaround time
Turnaround time is perhaps one of the most essential parts of any WordPress website maintenance. How much time does your website developer need to fix the issues or update anything on your website?
If your expected turnaround time doesn’t match your developer’s actual turnaround time, you may always have friction and conflicts with your developer.
What’s the solution here?
When you sign a website maintenance contract with your WordPress builder, do make sure to mention the turnaround time for different kinds of cases mainly:
- High severity cases where you need the solution in a few hours.
- Medium severity cases where you need the solution in a few days.
- Low severity cases where there is no urgency.
#3 Ensure the security compliance
Being one of the most popular CMS platforms on the planet, WordPress is also vulnerable to many types of security threats.
Website security is one of the primary reasons to maintain a WordPress website.
Hence, before you hire a WordPress developer to maintain your website, you must ensure that he is able to follow & comply with the required security compliances.
How can a developer secure your WordPress website?
- Updating all the plugins & themes regularly.
- Using plugins & themes from reliable sources only.
- Customizing the Admin URL & username.
- Updating the WordPress core version regularly.
- Limiting the access to important files such as wp-config.php
#4 Check out the reviews
Before hiring a WordPress developer to maintain your website, you must check their reviews from their previous or existing clients.
To maintain your WordPress website efficiently, you really need a proactive developer who can respond to your urgent requests promptly.
For example, if your website stops working all of a sudden or shows some warnings to your users, your developer must consider it as a ‘high severity case’ and must resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
How quickly does your web developer respond to your urgent requests? You may not know about it until you hire them.
But you can definitely check this with your developer’s existing customers who can provide you with their own first-hand experience working with your shortlisted developer.
#5 Know what you want
Even before you start hunting for a WordPress website maker for your website maintenance, you must know what exactly you want and what you expect from your developer.
You must ask yourself a few questions like:
How often would I want my developer to make changes on my website?
Will I need them to make text related changes on my website or I can handle it myself?
Do I need a developer who can add new features to my website under the same web maintenance contract?
How fast do I expect my web developer to revert back to me?
Once you list down your requirements and expectations, you can share them with your shortlisted developers to check if they can fulfill your requirements.
#6 Check out portfolio
Similar to checking the reviews of your shortlisted developer, you can also check out the portfolio or past works of your customers.
By having a look over their past works, you can get to know about the quality of work that your developer can deliver.
Perhaps you can ask them to show you some of the WordPress websites that they maintain regularly for their clients.
#7 Sign a contract
Last but not the least, you should never hire a web developer without signing a formal contract with him or her.
A formal contract between you and your developer will always help to protect the interests of both parties.
If you are wondering what should be the contents or clauses of a web maintenance contract, below are some of the major points that your contract must have:
- The annual cost of your website maintenance.
- The payment terms as mutually agreed upon.
- The list of fixed tasks that your developer will do. For eg. backup, updating plugins, etc.
- The scope of ad-hoc works. Up to how many hours your developer can accommodate for your additional requests.
- The turnaround time during which you expect your developer to resolve the issue or make the required changes.