Hiring a Drupal site developer

When hiring a Drupal site developer it's important to understand what you need and where you can find the service provider with that set of skills.

There are four sections to this document: Define the Scope of the Project, Define the Budget for the Project, Match The Desired Skill Level to the Task, Advertise the Job.

Define the Scope of the Project

Before you try to hire someone, you may want to define what the project would entail. Most developers like to work from clear requirements to achieve well defined goals. Having vague requirements and shifting goalposts is very frustrating for you, the client, and for the developers.

Remember that different skill sets are required for different projects, as well as for different parts of the same project, depending on size.

• Do you want installation and configuration?
• Do you want a theme designed?
• Do you want modifications to existing modules?
• Do you want new modules written?

You may not have the answers to all the above, but it helps a lot if you have some idea of what you need.

Note: This does not mean that you should read the modules list and then create your own list of modules that sound good. Your requirements should be a list of functionality and features that you need on the site. Your site developer is an expert at determining the best mix of modules to meet that goal.

Note: When you plan the time and resources for your project don't forget to include time and developer hours for a security review. In case of third party themes and modules that you use this can be done by the developers you've hired, bit for in-house developed themes and modules you should try to get a third party developer to do this. Keep in mind that the contributed themes and modules on drupal.org are not reviewed in any way and you use them on your own risk.

Define the Budget for the Project

Having a budgetary figure will help bring the scope down to earth in many cases. For example, your wish list may need to be trimmed back if you do not have enough budget to implement all of it.

Once you do that, you can now break the project into tasks (e.g. installation, theme design, programming).

Match The Desired Skill Level to the Task

• Hire a contributor to the Drupal community to ensure the sustainability of the project
• Hire someone who can research your needs to see if the many contributed modules already do what you need
• Hire a designer with CSS skills to customize an existing theme or create a new theme
• Hire an experienced Drupal developer if you have a short project time line
• Hire an experienced PHP developer who can learn and code to a well defined set of APIs if you have a large project and a multi-month deadline
• Hire someone who understands your industry and the particular needs of your sites users

Consider reading the relevant portions of the handbook page with common uses of Drupal and required skills.

Advertise the Job

There are several listings of Drupal service providers. After your needs analysis, if you determine that you need a Drupal consultant--as opposed to a PHP or CSS consultant-- consider the following resources. These lists also contain qualified PHP/CSS consultants, but you may have a relationship with such a service provider or be able to find a PHP/CSS provider somewhere else.

• List of Drupal.org profiles that "provide Drupal services" you can generally contact these individuals on their contact page in their profile. When you are in the users profile, read a few of their postings on their tracker page to get a feel for the kind of person they are and how they have helped the community.
• Hosting and Services pages in this handbook You're inside of this book section already.
• The Drupal Consulting List is another place to post a call for applicants
• The forum to post or browse Paid Drupal Services is a place where you can post your requirements and contact information if you would prefer that interested parties contact you.
• The Groups.drupal.org site has a job listing page where anyone who is a Groups.drupal.org can advertise jobs. The job submission form explains the process in more detail but please remember not to post the job to more than 4 groups.
• The Groups.Drupal.Org Group List has job postings and geographical groups which frequently have meetings. If you want someone local consider attending a meeting and advertising your project. If no meetings are scheduled, host one!
• If you are familiar with IRC you can use the IRC channel #drupal-consultants