EP267 – Website Inheritance – WPwatercooler

What should a developer do when inheriting a website? What should a new website owner do when looking for a web developer?

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• Existing website where discovery needs to be done by the potential developer as a scope of work
• Steve spends 5 to 10 hours of discovery work
• Steve generates a report back to the site owner that explains in details of errors and old plugin issues and provide recommendations
• Sé has many questions for the site owner before generating a quote.
• George talks about a “manual for your site” that would be pretty awesome for a site owner to have, we don’t think this exists yet but would be cool
• Jason asks if anyone on the panel had notes from the previous developer, Sé talks about how she got an old to-do list from a client from their previous developer. She talks about a list on a list the client takes about.
• Jason goes over the password, licenses and such.
• Jason talks about plugin purchases and asks how everyone deals with licensing
• George has “seen things”
• George talks about licenses and managing them for clients, and discussed how domain names need to be owned by the site owner. Sé adds that many clients don’t own their domains
• Steve talks about 1Password Vault and starts pouring info into it.
• George talks about the best way to allow our client to fire you without much issue. Steve adds that the “hit by the bus” idea makes for an easier way to plan for this. No one wants to dig to find data.
• Steve enforces a “your own the code” instructing their clients how to get the data from github and everyone discusses the change log idea. The journal of the build.
• Steve mentions that sometimes he has to fire a client and he wants the firing to be clean.
• Jason talks about a roommate analogy.
• Jason asks what do they provide their client.
• Jason talks about how Steve buys licenses for their clients. Now all of his clients use them.
• Jason asks about agency licenses and should folks use them?
• Steve informs his clients when he has to take a license from a site when they fire one another. He tells them to get their own single site license.
• Sé uses a google doc as a way to manage the documentation and licenses for her clients. Client empowerment is important.
• Steve wants handoffs to be smooth, his reputation is at stake.
• Sé adds that she wants to keep the site better than she found it.
• Steve talks about outdated plugins and slider plugins.

Jason changes the view on this topic and asks when someone is looking for a developer.

• Steve says it’s ultimately up to the client and they have a rigorous process that involves the client
• Sé talks about how the client needs to be on a managed service.
• Se talks about High Traffic to Low Traffic
• Jason talks about the potential client, how they should approach their potential developer.
• Steve says to ask lots of questions or move on
• Sé says to ask questions or move on, she also says that they should trust the developer they hire.
• Steve talks about “what’s your time worth?” When it comes to cheap hosting.
• Steve says to find out if the client values this, is it worth it to them? What are their business goals?
• Sé has a last minute thing, she noticed that on WordPress.com says “WordPress with JetPack” and that our predictions were correct!