We know PHP is ruling over the web and nearly 40% websites have PHP code in the source. Out of those PHP websites, almost 60% are in WordPress. Thus, WordPress is a king as a web development platform in the open source category.

The high prevalence of WordPress in the market leads to the higher demand for WordPress developers to attend various scales of WordPress development projects. It has made running after a talented and experienced developer a common scenario in the job market.

Unfortunately, finding the right match out of a big battalion of WordPress developer is nothing but a searching a needle in the heap of hay!

Yes, you have to implement some filters to get rid of mediocre WordPress developers and grab only true talent. So, my focus on the questions those can help you to find the right WordPress developer or team of developers that can attend any scale of your project.

Let’s see what those questions would be there.

Ask about the Difference between Action Hook and Filter Hook

Reasons for the Question:

Fundamentally, actions do stuff and filter change stuff. Both actions and filters are functions widely used in WordPress coding. Now, the concept of the hook is to provide a way to change the functions of WordPress including actions and filters.

Therefore, knowing the difference between these two fundamental functions of WordPress and using hooks practically to customize WordPress indirectly depicts the expertise of WordPress developer whom you concern in an online or F2F interview.

If you want to dig further, you can ask your WordPress developer to explain the understanding of hooks and the entire concept with some practical examples of code.

With a better understanding of the concept of the hook in WordPress programming, a developer can:

♦ Change anything in the WordPress code because the majority of core functions in the WordPress are consisting of actions and filters.

♦ Change complex functions easily.

♦ Change theme, its behavior, and source to accomplish intended goals.

♦ Can enable or disable changes.

♦ Make changes upgrade proof

It may help recruiter to gauge actual programming capabilities of the developer at first place by a simple yet significant question.

Ask about the Difference between Template and Theme

Reasons for the Question:

Many clients use both terms interchangeably and confusions. If you ask for the explanations of both of your WordPress developers, you can gauge how they can deal with non-tech fellows and tech-savvy fellows. Let me bring clarity here by defining both terms simply and comprehensively.

The template is a layout of a single web page on a WordPress website or any site. The theme is a design of the entire website including several templates for web pages.

Thus, you can customize a WordPress them using its provided options through back-end panel or dashboard. However, customization of template requires advanced coding of CSS and HTML as well as the creation of new theme based on custom templates.

Therefore, a power user can tweak WordPress theme easily, but modifications in WordPress template is only possible with experienced and expert WordPress programmer/developer.

By-and-large selection of themes, customization of templates, and customization of entire WordPress site using tweaking the core code or adding external modules in the form of extensions or plugins are things a WordPress developer has to face in everyday life.

Familiarity with all and producing practical examples in their portfolio tell the talents of a WordPress developer easily.

Ask about Blog Written by Developer Himself / Herself

Reasons for the Question:

Today, most of WordPress development companies and freelance WordPress developers take help of professional content writers. These content writers know the subject superficially and devoid of any practical experiences of coding and design to bring innovations or unique things on the surface. So, ask your developer to give original posts or blogs written by himself or herself or any of the team member in a company.

You will find original case studies, though process of developers, designing and programming approaches, technical and analytic abilities, and much more that can prove or show the levels of expertise of WordPress developer in the niche and on various skill sets they acquired over the time.

Ask about Live Portfolio and Prove It

Reasons for the Question:

Examining the code samples or past project documents hardly assure any tech-savvy client or B2B clients that work is original and done by a particular developer. You should ask about a live site, and run a few questions. For instance, how a developer can claim that the site has developed by himself or herself, and ask to produce solid and live proofs.

Apart from these, there are several things in the portfolio where creativity and hard work of a developer reflecting coding as well as designing. You have to go through selected projects and find out anything related to your project or concept and discuss it with the developer.

Ask about WordPress Coding Standards and How Developer Follows It

♦ Reasons for the Question:

♦ WordPress platform has defined coding standards to:

♦ Maintain comprehensibility of code

♦ Maintainability of code

♦ Migration ease of code

♦ Compatibility of code with other technologies and third-party software or services

If your developer knows all and follows the best practices of coding, it makes life easy whenever changes in future come into effect, and any developer will go to attend it.

Ask about the Difference between Performance Optimization and Conversion Optimization

Reasons for the Question:

Parameters for performance optimization mainly consist of site loading speed and speed of interactions on UIs. It requires cache management, image optimization, and multimedia content optimization along with code optimization to boost speed.

Conversion optimization comprising parameters that lead to high conversion rate through high traffic, best user experiences, the quick and easy path of conversion funnel and allied things affecting conversion.

Ask about How Developer Will Add Style Sheet in Head Section

Reasons for the Question:

You can ask your developer that what is right way to add a style sheet to the head section of the site. If your developer ‘enqueue’ theme instead of hooking to wp_head section, it is the right approach.

These kinds of questions help recruiters to explore the levels of expertise of your developer and abilities to take right approaches while managing or maintain a WordPress site for an issue or tweaking.

Ask about Permalink Structure of Site or Any Question Regarding SEO

Reasons for the Question:

The URL of your website homepage or index page is mostly indicating domain name of your website while URL of inner pages or posts are referring permalinks. The structure of permalinks depends on the architecture of content of your website. Therefore, search engines take it seriously and consider it in its algorithm for ranking.

If your WordPress developer is familiar with most of SEO features, functionality, and terminologies, chances become high to create an SEO-friendly website that ranks high in SERPs.

Ask about Communication and Coordination

Reasons for the Question:

Communication between WordPress development team and client is a vital aspect of the success of the entire project. Smooth, quick, and responsive communication assures exchanges of thoughts, reports, feedback, and resources aiding in the development process.

Today, we have the latest communication tools and channels to provide quick and round-the-clock access to the team and offer comforts to the overseas clients coming from the different time zones.

Ask about Challenges Come Into Way of Updates

Reasons for the Question:

We know WordPress platform issues updates more frequently than any other open source platform does. If a developer knows the easy and safe ways to incorporate those updates without malfunctioning of the site, data loss, rendering plugins or extensions obsolete, maintaining and smooth functioning of WordPress website become easy.

The majority of WordPress websites are customized to meet unique needs of clients and their businesses. Therefore, implementing frequent updates and upgrades proves daunting as well as challenging for a WordPress developer who is less familiar with the entire procedure.

Conclusion:

We know the levels of WordPress expertise are different in different developers like mere power users to professionals and finally, WordPress architects. An impeccable scanning method and owned knowledge or expertise in WordPress would help you to filter out the right candidates among the heap.

Get in touch with a recognized and reputed WordPress Development Company to offer you high-end and high quality WordPress websites or web applications using the latest tools and technologies.

We hope that now you can test the knowledge and technical acumen of Hire WordPress Expert at before commencing any WordPress project.

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About Tarang Vyas

Tarang Vyas, CTO at Perception System, a leading Tarang Vyas, CTO at Perception System, a leading WordPress Development Company , founded in 2001