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Why would you need a guide for hiring a web developer? Why would you need to hire a web developer in the first place? It’s true. While in the past you needed to either be a web developer yourself or hire a web developer if you wanted a website, today that’s not the case anymore. Content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal have enabled many people to build websites themselves. Additionally, website builders like Wix let you create sites via simple drag and drop. 1. It would save time. 2. You might need help with some of the more technical bits. In both cases it’s important to know how to find, hire, and work with a web developer so that your project runs smoothly. For that reason, our guide on how to hire a web developer will go over all the necessary steps of doing that. What Kind of Developer Do I Need?
Where to Hire a Web Developer? To hire a web developer, you first need to make clear for yourself what exactly you are trying to accomplish. If you don’t know that, you won’t know who to look for and what to tell them. Design - This can be anything from redesigning your logo or header image to overhauling the entire page layout or adding design effects. Functionality/coding - For example, adding a shopping cart, custom image slider, or making changes to your website’s management panel. Depending on which area your project focuses on, you need to hire different people (more on that below). If you are planning to create an entire website, you will need people for both. You need to be completely clear about what you need and write it down in detail. Eliminate the wrong candidates - If the job description is clear, you can already weed out people who are not qualified.
If you keep it vague and broad, a lot more candidates will apply to your posting as opposed to if you provide details. Save time upfront - If you are clear on your expectations, your web developer can spend less time in the discovery process. Instead, they can jump right into how to implement your project. Receive better estimates - Knowing the extent of the work will allow the candidates to better estimate the time and costs beforehand. It will also make costly changes less likely. Achieve clarity for yourself - Writing things out is also a good exercise for yourself. It helps you really think through what you are trying to accomplish and makes your ideas less hazy. That’s an important step towards accomplishing them. What Kind of Developer Do I Need? Now that you have defined the details of your project, it’s time to think about what kind of web developer you need to hire. The term “web developer” in reality covers different skills and job descriptions.
There is a difference between a developer and a designer. A designer is a person who comes up with the look of a website and creates assets like images, icons, etc. Their expertise is in Photoshop and other graphic design programs. A pure graphic designer doesn’t actually implement the site. Instead, they prepare a representation of what it will look like in the end. Someone else will make the actual website based on it. Nowadays, more and more designers also do the implementation. Those are usually referred to as web designers and their expertise includes markup languages like HTML, CSS, and increasingly JavaScript. A developer is a person who writes code. Meaning, they can get into your site and edit files to make changes or create an entire site from scratch. They also work with code editors and other development-related tools. Developers also have subgroups. The most significant are front-end and back-end development.
The front-end is the part of the website that visitors will see in their browser. The back-end is everything behind that. It’s both the place where you manage your website as well as how the site communicates with your server or database. Front-end developers and web designers are often the same. They use the same languages and both take care of the look and the feel of your website. Front-end developers can also signify the person who implements the design but doesn’t come up with it in the first place. There’s a lot of overlap in these areas. Back-end developers are focused on how your site works. They deal with the functionality and are also concerned with website speed and other technical issues. Their skill stack includes PHP (especially when you are working with WordPress), Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, and other programming languages. Front-end and back-end developers are specialists. It means that they are usually quite good in their own domain but not versed in the other person’s discipline.
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