Choosing a Website Developer (Part 1) - Cheap equals Trouble.

When choosing a website developer, going the cheap route - or basing your decision mainly on cost - will generally result in you ending up in hot water, one way or another. Unfortunately cheap is, well, cheap - whether that means outsourcing development to India or the Philippines, or choosing a local web developer that offers you the world for nothing - the age old saying applies "if it's too good to be true, it is."

In our first two scenarios, ones that we hear from a LOT of people, we will be talking about selecting a reliable developer and web platform.

Client #1: My previous developer built X % of the project, has taken our money, and now we can't get hold of him. A lot of what was built doesn't work properly.

 

The Problem
These developers offer dirt cheap prices in order to secure the project and they generally throw you onto a freeware platform, such as wordpress, joomla or drupal. They then throw a lot of free modules at it, so that it looks like it's working and once they've got a lot of your money, they run because they either can't actually develop any of the custom functionality that they promised, or they had no intention of following through with the project. Sometimes they dont even provide any of the login details to the domain etc, so you're stuck and it's an uphill, costly battle to get your domain back. In extreme cases we've encountered developers who even try to blackmail the client.

If your developer has dropped you, the only option is to find another developer to take over the "mess". Even though you may find a new developer, the problem is that they'll be building upon the existing "mess" - they generally don't analyze the existing modules, pages and database to make sure that what you currently have is up-to-date, bug free and secure.

 

The Solution
When selecting a developer, you shouldn't think of the developer as a once off builder and move on kinda deal. It's a better idea to partner with a developer who has a track record, and will provide ongoing support and maintenance, as having a website built and trying to host it yourself these days is a really bad idea: free platforms & free modules change so quickly, so unless you are going to be downloading and applying updates to the platform and modules yourself, chances are your website will be hacked in the near future. Solid developers should, within their maintenance plan, apply these updates and more importantly security updates for you. Unfortunately in reality, what we've noticed is that, this does not happen. 

We assist in this kind of scenario by importing your website, specifically the design graphic and data, into our morphogine platformWe then replace the existing modules with our similar morphogine modules, and we secure and bug check everything. We generally have to redesign the database as some of the free platforms have modules that are, more often than not, developed by inexperienced developers and their focus is not on data design, performance and more importantly security. The free platform modules are free, so the developers focus is to get them finished quickly. Now granted, some developers offer support and patches for their modules, but a lot don't.

Once we have launched the new website, we provide free bug fixes, as long as you are a client with us, and our fixes are generally applied within 1hr. Our morphogine platform also monitors all of our client websites and notifies us if any bugs are encountered - we fix bugs and apply updates the same day of the notification. We also push out any new functionality and updates to all of our client websites as soon as it is released. Get Started with our RFP.
 

Client #2: My previous developer built our website. We need to add some new functionality now, but they want to charge us a small fortune for it.
 

The Problem
These "developers" aren't really developers. They market themselves as developers, yet all they are offering is a website powered by a freeware platform, such as wordpress, joomla or drupal. They then plugin some freeware modules. The problem is that they aren't actually developers, so as long as you only request functionality that falls into the scope of free modules that are already available, you'll be fine. As soon as you request custom functionality or fixes/small changes to existing modules, they'll charge you an arm and a leg for them, because they'll have to outsource the development that they cant actually provide themselves. 

The only option here is to find another "real" developer to take over the development. The "fake" developers may at this point try and lock you in by saying that the platform is theirs or the design is theirs etc.

 

The Solution
When selecting a developer, you should make sure to ask if they are able to develop custom modules for you, as well as the approximate costs of custom modules. If they can't develop custom modules, then run for the hills.

We assist in this kind of scenario by importing your website, specifically the design graphic and data, into our morphogine platformWe then replace the existing modules with our similar morphogine modules, and we secure and bug check everything. We will then develop the new modules that you require - we can build anything - and we will plug them into our morphogine platform.

Once we have launched the new website, we provide free bug fixes, as long as you are a client with us, and our fixes are generally applied within 1hr. Our morphogine platform also monitors all of our client websites and notifies us if any bugs are encountered - we fix bugs and apply updates the same day of the notification. We also push out any new functionality and updates to all of our client websites as soon as it is released. Get Started with our RFP.

Posted in Choosing a Website Developer.

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