A landscaping owner once told me, "I just need a simple site." Ten minutes later we had listed a gallery, five services, four towns, a quote form with photo upload, and weekly mowing sign-ups. Here are the questions that turned a vague request into a...

A repair shop owner asked me for a "basic website" last month. After ten minutes of questions it became three different projects with three different prices. These are the questions I now ask before I quote anything. 1. How do customers contact you ...

When a tutor or learning center asks for a website quote, I do not start with design. I start with five scoping questions, because the answers decide whether the project is a $2,000 build or a $10,000 one. 1. Who needs to book, and with whom? A solo...

When a store owner messages me "my product options disappeared," the first thing I do is resist the urge to start changing things. Missing variation dropdowns look dramatic, but the cause is usually small. What matters is the order you check in, beca...

I build WordPress sites for local service businesses, and cleaning companies are one of the most common requests. They also tend to ask for a price before they know what they need. Over time I have settled on a handful of questions that turn a vague...

Daycare and preschool inquiries look uniform and aren't. "We need a website for our center" can mean a five-page brochure or an admissions funnel with tour booking, a waitlist and secure forms. Here are the questions I settle before I price anything...

When a therapist or counselor asks for a website quote, the visible work a clean theme, five to eight pages is the easy part. Three decisions underneath decide whether the project stays on budget. 1. What happens to the form data? A contact form ...

"I can type my password but WordPress just sends me back to the login page." I get this one a lot, and it nearly always shows up right after an SSL install, a www change, or a host move. Here is how I triage it. Step 0: Backup. Most fixes touch wp-c...

Over the years, coupon complaints have been one of the most common WooCommerce support requests I handle. The surprise is how rarely it is a code bug. Here is how I triage one. Step 1: Get the exact error text. Ask the customer for a screenshot, or ...

When an interior designer asks for a website quote, the number depends on a handful of decisions that are easy to overlook in the first call. This is the checklist I run through before pricing one. 1 What does the site need to do? Credibility only, ...

Flower shops look like an easy WooCommerce project until you list the rules. Most online stores sell items that ship in a few days. A florist sells a perishable product that has to arrive on a chosen date, so nearly every order carries conditions. H...

When a photographer asks for a quote, the first surprise is usually the price gap between quotes. The second is that most of the difference comes from work nobody sees: how the site handles images. I build WordPress and WooCommerce sites for a livin...

When a client reports "the cart doesn't update," the instinct is often to dive into the theme's cart.php template first. That's usually the wrong place to start — in most real cases, the cause is upstream of any custom code. Here's the triage order ...

Most WooCommerce "bugs" that store owners report to developers aren't bugs at all — they're server configuration issues wearing a WooCommerce costume. Email delivery is the best example. Here's what actually happens: WooCommerce triggers WordPress'...

As a freelance WordPress/WooCommerce developer who's built healthcare-adjacent sites, I keep seeing the same confusion in optometry: two practices both say they "got a website built," one spent $600, the other spent $8,000, and neither can explain th...

Most "website for a grooming business" projects aren't really design projects — they're integration projects. The client already has or wants a scheduling tool like Square Appointments, Acuity, or MoeGo. Your actual job as the developer is stitching ...

Most "gym website" requests that come in as dev work aren't really about design — they're about wiring three systems together correctly: the page layer WordPress, the scheduling layer a booking plugin or third-party tool like Mindbody/Glofox, and the...

Vet clinic sites look simple on the surface — a few pages, a contact form — but the ones that actually convert visitors into booked appointments have more moving parts than most small-business sites. Worth breaking down for other devs quoting this ki...

As developers, we've all heard the horror stories — or been the rescue call ourselves. Here's a practical breakdown of what actually happens on the recovery side when a client's original developer goes dark, from an access-and-ownership perspective t...

If you're a freelance dev quoting a Squarespace-to-WordPress migration, pricing it like a standard "content move" undersells the work — and pricing it like a full custom build oversells it to the client. Here's how to scope it properly. What's actu...