Hostage Taking by My Wordpress Developer
-
Since 2013 a Wordpress developer has coded my real estate website.
Their hourly rate is $24 but the programmers take too long to perform tasks and the service has become prohibitively expensive. Examples of unreasonable time estimates below:
|
|
1. Change theme settings so posts/pages do not display a date. -> 7 hrs
2.Google search results are displaying the breadcrumb on the top of each page rather than the URL. Please correct so this does not display. -> 3 hrs
3. Install SSL certificate to www.metro-manhattan.com domain -> 8 hrs|
|
The above does not include 5-6 hours for testing.
I am considering changing vendors. Potential programmers have asked how the site was developed and to what extent is it is customized. Ends up several plugins were built from scratch.
My question is whether a new developer is going to be able to pick up a custom coded site. That without understanding how the site was built, any change will break the site. My concern is that current developer has made themselves indispensable, and created a situation where there is no alternative to using them and they can therefore charge any price they want.Any thoughts?
Also below are questions I asked my developer about how the site was built and their answers:
| 1. Was everything coded using a child theme?
No, is a custom theme.2. Did you use any ready made theme or just plugins
We used the theme and and we've used plugins. Third party plugins and plugins builded from scratch3. Can Wordpress and every one of the plugin be updated?
Wordpress can be updated, core files was never modified. If after an update something start to work wrong is due to some radical wordpress change or similarCan't be updated:
- FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin
Created at xxx:
- Form Submissions Report
- Miscellaneous Hooks and Filters
- NYC Check memory usage
- NYC SEO listings
- NYC Slider
- Sitemap Updater
4. Were any of the plugins customized and if so, which ones?
Yes, this plugin "FireStorm Professional Real Estate Plugin" | -
Fortunately, I do have full control of the server and backups.
But I should have never agreed to allowing the modification of plugins. At the time I did not understand the implications.
Would it help a new coder if the previous developer provided a detailed description of the modified plugins? What if I agreed to pay the old developer to act a consultant to a new developer?
My developer believes he is in the drivers seat and is charging me 3-5x what is reasonable and fair. Result is that I can't afford to make any meaningful improvements to the site.
-
It can be very difficult to get a new developer to take on a site that has been designed by someone else even if it is on a standard platform like WordPress.
The core files should never be edited and you should only accept updates from the platform provider e.g. WordPress.
Always make sure the domain is in your own name and you have access to the hosting. And make sure you have your own off-line backup of the entire site including content and databases.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any WordPress themes better for schema
I'm putting together a holiday listing sits and as seo is key would like to add schema data. Does anyone know of any themes that are easier to do this with for a non techie - have looked at plug ins but they get a mixed review Thanks Neil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neilhenderson1 -
Should I nofollow my Wordpress tags?
I have a website that have a strong root domain (ranking on many terms) but the subpages (articles) doesn't rank well. My feeling is that the linkjuice is not flowing to them (not enough anyway). When I run site:http://mydomain.com I have my root as the first result and the next many results are tagpages on my sites. I have arund 180 index pages, and I need to go to down to result #50 give or take before I see any subpage using the site command. My website theme have the tags on every page possible. The tags are useful for my viewers, but not SEO useful, but I fear that they are dilluting my linkjuice. Should I nofollow and noindex them? Noindex makes sense (the tags are just duplicate content featuring snippets of text from the articles). But Nofollow would make sense too since I wouldn't send any linkjuice through the tags. What would you guys do? Bests regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | claus101 -
Subdomain SEO question (php script on domain + wordpress on subdomain)
Hi Moz fellows, I am doing my first website which is entirely .php scripted. But I would like to have a wordpress blog to create content and blog posts, while the .php side of the website is more for sales pages and user generated listings.The only way to do this is to install wordpress on a subdomain "blog.website.com" QUESTION: If all my keywords targeted content is on the subdomain's Wordpress blog, but all my guest blogging efforts link to my main website, which one will rank? The subdomain or the domain? I need the domain to rank well as it is a Fiverr-like script, so if tons of people land on my "blog.website.com" subdomain, they will not convert into users... Let me know if you have experience with such a scenario, and thank you all in advance for your help! -Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre0 -
Yoast & rel canonical for paginated Wordpress URLs
Hello, our Wordpress blog at http://www.jobs.ca/career-resources has a rel canonical issue since we added pagination to the front page and category-pages. We're using Yoast and it's incorrectly applying a rel-canonical meta tag referencing page 1 on page 2, 3, etc. This is a known misuse of the rel-canonical tag (per Google's Webmaster Blog - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html, which says rel-canonical should be replaced with rel-prev and rel-next for page 2, 3, etc.). We don't see a way to specify anywhere in Yoast's options to correct this behaviour for page 2, 3, etc. Yoast allows you to override a page's canonical URL, otherwise it automatically uses the Wordpress permalink. My question is, does anyone know how to configure Yoast to properly replace rel-canonical tags with rel-prev and rel-next for paginated URLs, or do I need to look at another plugin or customize the behavior directly in my child theme code? This issue was brought up here as well: http://moz.com/community/q/canonical-help, but the only response did not relate to Yoast. (We're using Wordpress 3.6.1 and Yoast "Wordpress SEO" 1.4.18)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aactive0 -
Should I change wordpress urls?
Should I change my wordpress permalinks to include the keyword? For examples at the minute my url is http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-singer. Is it better to be http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-bands/wedding-singer. 'home' is not relevant so surely 'live-bands' would be better? If I change the urls won't I lose 'link juice' as external links will all point to a url that no longer exists? Or will wordpress automatically redirect the old url to the new one? Finally, if I should change the url as described how do I do it on wordpress? I can only see how to edit the last bit of the url and not the middle bit.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Duplicate content from development website
Hi all - I've been trawling for duplicate content and then I stumbled across a development URL, set up by a previous web developer, which nearly mirrors current site (few content and structure changes since then, but otherwise it's all virtually the same). The developer didn't take it down when the site was launched. I'm guessing the best thing to do is tell him to take down the development URL (which is specific to the pizza joint btw, immediately. Is there anything else I should ask him to do? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Does Google prefer Wordpress Blogs?
In creating a regular brochure website such as one for a dentist or doctor, do you see any SEO benefit to having it based in a Wordpress blog? I do see the SEO benefit of having an actual blog on the site and continually updating that, but simply using the Wordpress platform as a CMS - does that give the site any benefit? If there is a benefit, is there a way to duplicate that advantage without going through the trouble of creating a Wordpress template for the site? Maybe just publishing a sitemap.xml, and feed, etc? Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Wordpress blog integration with full website effect on SEO
I have searched and searched for the answer to this question and can't find it. We are going to be launching a Wordpress blog on our domain shortly, however we have a much larger site that is mixed with static and dynamic pages full of custom programming tied to databases, etc. that we are running around the blog and can't integrate that into Wordpress due to its complexity. What this means is we have to install Wordpress on our servers somehow separate from the pages of our website. What I am wondering is if we run Wordpress in the /blog directory of our site as a separate installation if it will inherit the domain authority of our domain (currently around 60) or if it will be viewed as a separate site and get no ranking. Also, will our main site inherit the additional link juice from the inbound links that we get from the blog with it being separate from the main site? How does this need to be setup on our webservers to ensure the blog gets authority of the domain, and the blog contributes maximum SEO value to the domain? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0