I recently hired a company to build my cms. They suggested WordPress. I am concerned that a developer new to wordpress could be an open ticket for a great deal of problems in the future. There are so many themes and templates available that I cannot understand why he would want to build one from scratch. My estimate keeps changing and I do not have a contract. After spending months to get just the first page right I find out my estimate has completely changed. He may be a nice guy and maybe one hand does not know what the other is doing in the company (ei. salesperson and developer), but I think he is learning to development themes in WordPress for fun and charging me to do so.....I hate to accuse without the facts. Any suggestions? Alot goes into building a theme and bugs are inevitable, but I don't want them at my expense. I have already wasted 4 months with this company and they have switched my original CMS to WordPress. I, ofcourse, had to pay for them to program WordPress differently to match my design (simple design). Tomorrow is my deadline. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!
theme development from scratch may be mistake need opinions from the experts (3 posts)
-
pattybb
Posted 2 years ago # -
Have you had a look through the WordPress Theme directory to see if any of the free themes are similar to the design you are looking for? All clients tend to think that their design is "simple" to implement but, in reality, want additional custom functionality that could be anything but simple.
I'd strongly recommend that you take the time out draw up a design specification - either by yourself or with your developer. The more detailed, the better. 60% of all IT projects fail because the project wasn't spec'd properly first.
My estimate keeps changing and I do not have a contract
Sorry but that's plain foolish. Contracts protect both parties and, without a formal estimate, you're essentially signing an open cheque. Contracts don't have to be big formal documents. They can be simply letters of agreement as long as they lay out clearly what is to be done and, if necessary, the agreed timescale.
Nor must they cover an entire site development project. The project can be broken into simpler modules with clear sign-offs. Sometimes that's far more manageable and does mean that you're not tied to the same developer if there are problems.
I'd suggest you get a spec, formal estimate and contract sorted out asap.
-
Posted 2 years ago #thanks for your advice
Topic Closed
This topic has been closed to new replies.
