How to Hire a WordPress Developer: 12 Questions to Ask Before You Commit

The short answer: hire the WordPress developer who can show you live sites that load fast, explain their update and deployment process in plain English, and put ownership of your code, hosting and accounts in writing. Price and years of experience tell you far less than those three things. Most bad hires fail on process and ownership, not on raw coding skill.

I’ve been on the other side of this conversation for years, usually when a client arrives after a previous developer disappeared, left a site nobody can update, or locked them out of their own hosting. Below are the 12 questions I would ask if I were the one hiring, what a good answer sounds like, and the red flags that should end the conversation.

What should you check before asking any questions?

Start with evidence, because interview answers are easy to rehearse and live sites are not. Ask for three to five links to real client sites, then test them yourself.

• Run each site through PageSpeed Insights. A developer who builds slow sites will build you a slow site. My Core Web Vitals guide explains which scores matter.
• Open the site on your phone. Tap the menu, fill in the contact form, and watch for layout jumps.
• Look at the work, not the template. If five “different” sites share the same layout, you are buying a theme install, not development.
• Check the portfolio for your type of project. A brochure site, a WooCommerce store and a membership platform are different skills. Browse my own portfolio for the standard I would expect you to hold anyone to.

What are the 12 questions to ask a WordPress developer?

Each question below is meant to start a conversation, not get a yes or no. The table summarises what a strong answer sounds like against what should worry you, and the sections after it explain why each one matters.

Questions 1–4: Process, staging and updates

These four reveal whether you are hiring a professional or someone experimenting on your live site. The deployment question is the most telling: a good answer mentions a separate staging copy, version control and a way to roll back. If the answer is “I edit the files through the hosting panel,” every change is a gamble with your customers.

The theme question has a clear right answer. WordPress’s own developer handbook explains that child themes allow parent themes to be updated without losing your modifications. A developer who edits the parent theme directly is setting a trap: the next theme update silently erases their work.

Questions 5–8: Plugins, speed and security

Every plugin is a permanent dependency with its own update schedule, performance cost and security surface. That matters because, according to Patchstack’s State of WordPress Security in 2026, 91% of the new vulnerabilities found in 2025 were in plugins, against only 9% in themes and just six in WordPress core. A developer who adds a plugin for every small feature multiplies your risk.

For speed and security, listen for specifics rather than slogans. “I install a caching plugin” is not a speed strategy. A real answer covers image sizes, which scripts load on which pages, and how the result gets measured. For security, a good developer talks about limited user roles, two-factor login, tested backups and a regular update routine. If you want the full picture of what that routine looks like, read my WordPress security checklist.

Question 8 is about the day something breaks, because eventually something does. I wrote up the most common causes in what actually breaks WordPress sites. What you want to hear is a plan: automatic backups, uptime monitoring and a clear response time, ideally as part of an ongoing website management package rather than an emergency call.

Questions 9–12: Ownership, handover and trust

Ownership is where most horror stories begin. You should be the registered owner of the domain, the hosting account and every admin login, with the developer added as a user. If your site lives on the developer’s hosting under their account, leaving them means rebuilding from scratch. Put it in the contract before work starts.

Ask what you will receive at handover: admin access, a list of plugins and licences, a short written guide to editing your content, and a walkthrough call. On references, treat them as non-negotiable and actually call them. Anonymous testimonials prove little, which is why I keep verified client feedback on a public reviews page anyone can read.

What red flags should end the conversation?

Some answers are enough on their own to walk away. These are the ones I see most often in stories from clients who have been burned before:

• They want to host your site on their own account and won’t transfer it later.
• They refuse to share staging links, progress updates or a written scope.
• They promise a fixed outcome, such as page-one rankings, that nobody can guarantee.
• Every portfolio piece is the same template with different colours.
• They are vague about who does the work and who fixes it when something breaks.
• Pressure tactics: a “special price” that expires today.

One red flag can be a bad day. Two or three together is a pattern, and it is far cheaper to walk away now than to untangle a half-built site later.

Should you hire a freelancer or an agency?

Neither is automatically better. The right choice depends on your project’s size and how much coordination you want to manage yourself.

Agencies bring more people and processes, which suits large multi-discipline builds, but you often pay for layers you don’t need on a focused project. Either way, the 12 questions above apply identically. A good agency answers them just as clearly as a good freelancer.

How do you test a developer before committing?

Run a small paid task first, such as fixing one specific bug, building one custom section or auditing your current site. Two to four hours of paid work shows you how they communicate, how they handle ambiguity and whether they deliver what they said. It is the cheapest insurance in the whole hiring process.

Before you brief anyone, also work out what your project is likely to involve. My project cost calculator gives you an instant estimate, and my guide to what drives WordPress website cost explains why quotes for the same project vary so much. Going into a conversation with a realistic scope makes every answer you hear easier to judge.

Hiring well is mostly about asking the right questions before any money changes hands. If you’d like to put these questions to me, or want a second opinion on a quote you’ve already received, book a free consultation and bring the proposal along.