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
-
Best Practices to Design Site Mock Up Using Wordpress Rather than Wireframes?
We are in the process of redesigning our real estate website. Our designer/developer is very quick and confident on Wordpress. He suggests designing directly on Wordpress and bypassing wireframes and a mock ups. He is very confident in his Wordpress abilities. Is it a mistake to take this approach? He has also asked that we select a real estate theme at this point. I would think that the theme would be selected after the wireframes and mock ups get done. But there are certainly different approaches. Are there best practices for redesigning a webiste; any suggestions? Are there significant risks/disadvantages to bypassing wireframes/mock ups? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan Rosinsky0 -
Blog on Custom Website - WordPress Alternatives
Howdy folks. I'm trying to find any good alternative for adding CMS blog to custom website. Most people, us included, are using WP, but, as we know, it's really painful to work with, easily hackable etc etc. So, I wonder if anyone knows of a blog platform, which can be installed on our own websites for blogging, but without drawbacks of WordPress. Any nudge in correct direction will be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK1 -
How to remove skip links, main navigation, sidebars as h2 tags in wordpress genesis
Our website CMS is wordpress. Due to the Genesis Framework; below 4 phrases tuned into h2 tags: Skip links, Header Right, Main navigation and Footer. How to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Moving html site to wordpress and 301 redirect from index.htm to index.php or just www.example.com
I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
Page Authority 40
Linking Root Domains 31
External Link Count 138
Internal Link Count 18
Status Code 200
1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
Page Authority 19
Linking Root Domains 1
External Link Count 0
Internal Link Count 15
Status Code 200
1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
or
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks0 -
Hacked Wordpress Site! So many 404s
So I had a site that I worked on get hacked. We eliminated the URLs, found the vulnerability (Bluehost!) and rolled back the site. BUT they got into the Google Search Console and indexed a LOT of pages. These pages are now 404 errors and I asked the robots.txt file to make them noindex. The problem is that Google is placing a "this site may be hacked" on the search listing. I asked Google to reevaluate it and it was approved by there are still 80,000 404 errors being shown and it still believes that the uploaded files that we deleted should be showing. Doing a site search STILL shows the infected pages though and it has been a month. Any insight would definitely be helpful. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Redirecting site from html/php to wordpress
I've never come across this and haven't been able to really find anything that explains it very well. I want to get opinions before we make a definitive decision. Here's the scenario... I am working on a site that was built in HTML/PHP and some of the pages are ranking pretty well. (some page 1, but not number 1) We are going to start using the Wordpress platform by year's end. The pages that were built in html have been built a little spammy but they still rank. I just think they are keyword stuffed a little and not very "reader friendly" (I think the last person was spinning content). So, we've built completely new content on our new pages and we've commissioned really good content writers for them. I will be handling the on-page SEO going forward so I know what to do there. My questions are this.... Should I 301 the old pages to the new pages with the better content? (old pages have the .html or .php extensions so www.example.com/keyword.php will become www.example.com/keyword-keyword Is there any negative side to doing this since the content will be completely different then the old pages that are being 301 from. (Keywords are pretty much staying the same with the exception of minor variations. ie, www.example.com/red-cashmere-sweater.php to www.example.com/cashmere-sweater) I ask this because I've moved sites before where I've just changed the location of the same content. I've never done it where the content is changing and so is the URL extension. Thank you in advance for your help and guidance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarinPirkey0 -
Better to optimize page, post or category in WordPress
Hello, This question is for the WordPress experts out there. I've always wondered if it is better for SEO to focus on a particular keyword by writing a page or a post dedicated to it. For example, if I want to rank high for the keyword "Seattle rocks", do you think I'd be better off writing a page titled "Seattle rocks" or a post titled "Seattle rocks". The ideal for me would be to create a category with the URL that includes that keyword for my WordPress blog, but I do not know if I can do a good job in terms of SEO optimizing the keyword. For instance, if we consider the keyword in the example above, I'd create a category which will have the following URL: http://www.seomozthebest.com/category/seattle-rocks Do you think I can still focus on that keyword having such URL? As you know, WordPress would allow me to write some text in the description tag, which will be visible on the site. I guess that I could use the description box to create some optimized content using the keyword "Seattle rocks" and then launch a link building campaign using the anchor text "Seattle rocks" directing to the URL: http://www.seomozthebest.com/category/seattle-rocks Do you think that I can optimize the keyword by creating a category? Thank you for reading such long question. I tried to be as clear as possible. Sal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0