Hire a WordPress Developer: The Questions to Ask Before You Sign (2026)

A generic checklist for hiring a vendor covers IP ownership, timezone overlap, and communication cadence, useful for any provider you bring on. Hiring a WordPress developer calls for a different set of questions, tied to how WordPress sites break in practice: plugin conflicts, unpatched vulnerabilities, and page-builder bloat that a generic vetting process will not catch. The questions below target those specific failure points.

Ask about WordPress experience, not general web experience

General web development skill does not carry over to WordPress on its own. Look for 3 to 4 years minimum working with WordPress themes, plugins, and core, and ask which specific plugins and page builders they have shipped production sites with. A developer fluent in Elementor might have no experience with a full custom theme build, and the reverse holds just as often. Neither gap disqualifies a candidate, but you need to know which skill set you are hiring before the project starts, not after a builder-only developer struggles with a custom theme requirement.

Ask how they handle plugin security

The WordPress ecosystem logged 11,334 new vulnerabilities in 2025, a 42% jump from 2024's 7,966, and 91% of them sat in plugins rather than WordPress core, which had only 2 confirmed vulnerabilities all year. 43% of disclosed vulnerabilities allow unauthenticated exploitation, and the median time to mass exploitation after disclosure runs 5 hours. Ask a candidate developer three things: how many plugins they install by default on a new build, how they vet a plugin before adding it to a client site, and how fast they patch a live site once a vulnerability gets disclosed for something already installed. A developer with a real process names specific tools, a vulnerability scanner, a plugin advisory feed, and tests updates on staging before pushing to production. A developer without one says they update plugins 'when needed' and stops there.

Ask to see live sites, not screenshots

• Open the portfolio links and check load speed, mobile rendering, and whether the forms submit.
• Ask which pages or features they built themselves versus what a template or another team member handled.
• If they show WooCommerce work, ask about catalog size and whether they set up payment gateways and shipping rules or only handled the theme.

Ask about coding standards and documentation

A developer who follows WordPress Coding Standards writes code that another developer can pick up later without a rebuild, and that matters the day you need someone else to make a change. Ask whether they document custom functionality, whether they use a staging environment before pushing updates live, and whether they hand over clean, commented code at project close, or code only they can maintain.

Ask for references and check them

Request 3 references from recent projects and ask each one the same three questions: did the project finish on time and on budget, how did the developer handle an unexpected problem mid-build, and would they hire the same developer again. A developer who cannot produce 3 references, or who points you toward references from years back, is telling you something worth hearing.

None of these questions demand technical knowledge to ask, only patience to get a specific answer instead of a general reassurance. For a second opinion on a developer's quote or a technical scope before you commit, our WordPress development team reviews them at no charge.