Elegant Themes had another good post yesterday which is helpful for both web developers and clients. Do you recognize yourself? Luckily, I haven’t had many clients who think this way, but its always good to be prepared. If you want, check out the original post directly.
The post is written by Tom Ewer, a professional writer, blogger and longtime WordPress enthusiast. He’s written over 1,000 articles across the web on the world’s most popular Content Management System. (I’ve edited the post a little for your reading pleasure! – D.P.)
1. The DIYer
You want full admin privileges to tinker under the hood a bit. However, its possible to mess everything up, and my bet is you won’t want to pay for fixes.
2. The Minimizer
You think that moving your WordPress site to a different host is simply a quick FTP job – just a matter of downloading all the files, then uploading them on the new server. But it’s much more complicated. WordPress is database-driven, with intricate relationships that will break if files are simply moved. We can offer site relocation as a separate service.
3. The Uninformed Business Owner
You don’t understand why anyone pays for hosting when WordPress.com, Weebly and Wix are perfectly good alternatives. These sites add advertising and credits that free hosting mandates, along with limitations in function – including the funky URL the site will likely have, which will impact your business. For these reasons, WordPress.com and other free hosts may be fine for just a personal blog. However, for a business site for which credibility, flexibility and scalability are important, you need only pay as little as $12 for a small business site.
4. The Big Picture Fan
The images you send are in high resolution, and you insist they stay that way on the site – after all, visitors to your site want the highest quality possible. A week later, you call to ask why the site is loading so slowly. Resolution past a certain limit is a hindrance, not an enhancement. High-res images load far more slowly than typical images – and that costs you visitors. We can show you previous examples of optimized images that have been provided for previous sites – and train you to optimize images yourself for the web.
5. The “Budget? What Budget?” Guy
You react negatively when asked what the budget is – and you have no idea – and believe that all WordPress sites require the same amount of work, aside from content. We need at least a rough number so we can tell you what that amount will buy.
We will ask, “Please tell me the purpose of your website, what you want visitors to do, and what your budget is so I can then tell you what services I can provide for that amount”. This approach ensures you get the most value for your money.
6. The Project Manager Who Thinks WordPress Is a Word-Processing Program
You think WordPress is just for blogging on WordPress.com, or worse yet, you confuse it with Microsoft Word. (Yes, this really happens). Worse yet, you don’t think WordPress developers are “real” developers at all. Please know that WordPress powers some big-name sites, from BBCAmerica to The Harvard Gazette. WordPress “Open source” means – constant development, security updates and an enormous support community. Using WordPress means that you are essentially leveraging not just our talents, but also those of hundreds of brilliant coders.
7. The Cheapskate
You are hellbent on using a poorly coded free theme that’s full of malware (such as Base 64 injections), sneaky credits in the footers, and customizations coded right into the functions file rather than as plugins. Unfortunately, you just doesn’t understand the problems this causes. These issues can affect site performance and produce embarrassing gaffes that erode credibility. If you insists on picking your own theme, let us direct you to some reputable premium theme providers (like Elegant Themes of course ;-)).
8. The Wannabe
WordPress is popular for its usability, among other things. It’s no bad thing when a client can add posts and make minor changes on their own. However, this particular client asks questions – a lot of questions – in a barely disguised (and misguided) attempt to learn the skills that have taken you years to hone. His ultimate goal is to go the DIY route because, hey, it’s “just” WordPress. If you want to learn more, go to the WordPress Codex. But, If you are going to jump in yourself, you are going to have to do it without a free life ring. If you break the site, you will have to pay for fixing it!
9. The Elitist
You’ll find this guy lurking in forums, writing in blogs, attending networking events. He is a Web Programmer, aka Internet Engineer, Website Architect, or any number of other lofty titles. No jQuery for him: He codes only in pure JavaScript. He never cuts and pastes that line of code at the top of any HTML document. In fact, he cuts and pastes nothing; it’s all there in his magnificent mind. And he looks down on you because you “rely” on WordPress.
In contrast, I am an efficiency expert who prefers not to write the same code over and over again. Why reinvent the wheel when a secure, SEO-friendly, extendible platform like WordPress already exists? Using WordPress is not cheating; it’s bending proven code to do your creative bidding – and that’s just smart.
10. The Generalist
You think that, since we “work in computers” we can fix yours, from a simple browser issue all the way to hard drive issues. Hardware just isn’t our thing, and I’d hate to give you bad advice. Instead, go to (a) Google, or (b) the Yellow Pages. This goes for email accounts too. IT professionals are there to help you with your personal choices in email software and computer set up. We will aid them however we can!