A nice thesis theme to my website
October 18, 2012 4:04 PM   Subscribe

Where To Find a Thesis Wordpress Theme Designer?

Hive Mind Hello!
So I am small business owner with a tiny landscaping company.

About two years ago I finally got a decent logo, registered the domain, got onto wordpress and bought and installed thesis. It works all right, the SEO is pretty outstanding and I get some decent traffic (~160 uniques a day, most from the region I provide the service).

So far I’ve been getting most of our new clients through the website and I am happy about that. I think that aesthetically and the way it’s arranged my website is subpar to my larger competitors’ websites. Its kind of ugly and amateurish presented which makes me wonder how many potential clients it turns off immediately upon landing my main page
.
Its basically a small services company website where I convert through folks contacting me and scheduling an estimate visit. I try to blog regularly as it brings me traffic and keeps the website fresh. I would like the recent blog post and the contact for an estimate display prominently on all the page.

So basically, my question is, how can I find a competent thesis theme developer and how much should I expect to pay?

There are so many sources, Odesk, various freelancing aggregators, Craigslist, Reddit, Google or multiple crowdsourcing sites. Where do I have the best chance to find a good value as in quality/price. Now I am not saying I haven’t budgeted for it, but I would like to find a mid level developer (not the best or a complete noob).

What kind of questions should I ask? Of course looking at previous jobs they did, but anything else aside of that?

What should I expect to pay for a service like that? I just want the initial theme exactly the way I like it with no further services once the job is done. I am pretty internet savvy but graphic design and layouts are not my strong point. Once the design is setup I can manage it well.

Here are some landscaping websites I enjoyed:
http://www.topchoicelanddesign.com/
http://www.gibbslandscape.com/
http://www.dwgd.com/

Thanks and hope you have a wonderful evening,
posted by Sentus to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)
 
First of all I'd avoid places like Odesk.

You might have the best luck posting the job here at metafilter in the "jobs" section, I believe there are a fair number of Wordpress developers here, or finding someone through Wordpress.org's site.

As far as what you can expect to pay: I do a fair amount of design and custom theming+templating for Wordpress clients and my going rate is $50/hour flat regardless of whether it's wireframing, graphic design, css, or php etc. I think my rates fall within the norm. Cost will always depend on the scope of what you need done, so the better you can define that in writing (it sounds like you have a lot of specifics already, so that's great) before taking quotes, the more realistic those quotes will be.

You might be able to find someone with less experience to take your project on at a lower rate, but I'd make sure they've got a live site or two that shows a customization specifically of the Thesis framework. I've worked with Thematic and now Genesis (and of course the default Twenty Eleven) but wouldn't feel comfortable estimating how long it would take to do what you'd like done in any framework I'm unfamiliar with.

One final thought is since you are using Thesis, I'm sure there are a lot of premium child themes (or I guess Thesis calls them "skins") you can purchase that are built on Thesis and may get you most of the way there. Purchasing a pre-made template (skins? really?) and then hiring someone to make some small changes to graphics or logos might be your least expensive option. Some "skins".
posted by stagewhisper at 4:40 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


I haven't been on the Diythemes forums in years, but I thought they had a jobs forum there. Maybe you can add the job there?
posted by backwards guitar at 3:49 AM on October 19, 2012


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