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
-
MOZ is showing that I have non- indexed blog tag posts are they supposed to be nonindexed. My articles are indexed just not the blog tags that take you to other similar articles do I need to fix this or is it ok?
MOZ is showing that my blog post tags are not indexed my question is should they be indexed? my articles are indexed just not the tags that take you to posts that are similar. Do I need to fix this or not? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tyler58910 -
What is the best way to add semantic linked data to WordPress?
As a recent Moz subscriber, I'm trying to up my game in terms of inbound marketing. One of the most pressing tasks is to add json-ld across all of my WordPress sites. What is the best way to do this? Should I use the technique set out here: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/using-google-tag-manager-to-dynamically-generate-schema-org-json-ld-tags Or should I use one of these plugins? https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/schema/ https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-structuring-markup/ I want to get this right so any guidance would be gratefully received.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | treb0r0 -
I am looking for an SEO company/or individual to take control of my three websites....
Hello! I am located in NYC and am actively searching for a company or individual to take control of my SEO. I have attempted to do this on my own and it is just too time consuming and technical for me to handle while also running my business. I have been burned by SEO companies in the past so I am looking for someone reputable that can be trusted. I am in the service industry in an extremely competitive market. I am hoping that I can find some recommendations on here on who might be able to assist me grow my online presence. My websites do currently rank for several key words and as well as local packs. I am looking to expand on that and maintain current standings. Please help!!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scohen862 -
Is WordPress a Blog in the eyes of Google?
Hi, My online Shop is based on WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. Now, I have met a SEO guy who told me that's bad in the eyes of Google: Because Google apparently sees my website as a blog and not as a E-Commerce site. Wow, this statement really confused my, since I am working so hard on content and good rankings. Any opinions on this would be appreciated. Best, Robin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Recovering from index problem (Take two)
Hi all. This is my second pass at the problem. Thank you for your responses before, I think I'm narrowing it down! Below is my original message. Afterwards, I've added some update info. For a while, we've been working on http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/. Everything was going swimmingly, and we had a top 5 ranking for the term 'bird hides' for this page - http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/products/bird-hides. Then disaster struck! The client added a link with a faulty parameter in the Joomla back end that caused a bunch of duplicate content issues. Before this happened, all the site's 19 pages were indexed. Now it's just a handful, including the faulty URL (thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/index.php?id=13) This shows the issue pretty clearly. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&oq=site%3Athewilddeckcompany.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2178j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 I've removed the link, redirected the bad URL, updated the site map and got some new links pointing at the site to resolve the problem. Yet almost two month later, the bad URL is still showing in the SERPs and the indexing problem is still there. UPDATE OK, since then I've blocked the faulty parameter in the robots.txt file. Now that page has disappeared, but the right one - http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/products/bird-hides - has not been indexed. It's been like this for several week. Any ideas would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google
HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Premium Real Estate Wordpress Templates and SEO
Has anyone had any experience with premium real estate templates and SEO? Are their reviews in this regard? How does one get past the marketing and find out if they are SEO friendly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Will changing my wordpress permalinks add SEO value?
I'm considering changing my permalinks from: http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-1 http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-2 to: http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-london etc... (these are example pages and don't actually exist) as I want to optimise pages for specific cities. This will create a load of 404 errors which I will have to 301 redirect (I presume that's the best way of doing it?). Does having the keyword in the url help and is the added SEO value (if their is any) worth it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0