Review of WPCoder, PSD to WordPress Coding Service

A few days ago this blog got a re-design, and in the announcement post I mentioned that the coding of the WordPress theme was done by WPCoder. Today I’d like to publish a review of their services for those of you who may have an interest in using them in your own work. For disclosure purposes, this is not a paid review or an advertisement, but I did receive discounted services for the review. However, there was no requirement to publish a “positive” review and the situation has not affected anything that is presented in this post.

What Does WPCoder Do?

Web designers are no doubt familiar with companies that specialize in PSD to HTML/CSS conversion. There are hundreds of these companies and most guarantee conversion in a specific number of hours or days. WPCoder is similar, but rather than providing you with the HTML and CSS, they code your design into a WordPress theme. So as the designer you will be able to focus on creating the look that you or your client wants, and WPCoder will handle the coding and the conversion into a functional WordPress theme.

Why Would Designers Use This Service?

Like a PSD to HTML service, the main benefit is that you can save time, which you can then use for other projects or purposes. If the time that you can save is worth more to you than the cost of the service, you may want to consider outsouring the coding. Another reason that some designers choose to use WPCoder is that not all designers are comfortable and experienced with coding WordPress themes. In this case, you can outsource to developers that work with WordPress themes on a daily basis.

Pricing

Unlike most PSD to HTML companies, WPCoder does not have standard pricing based on turnaround time and other details. They price each project individually, so if you are interested in using their services you can contact them with the details of your project and get a quote.

The Process

As I mentioned, to start the process you will contact WPCoder to get a quote. When contacting them, their website allows you to upload the PSD files that you would like to have coded, as well as your instructions or any relevant details that need to be shared. A manager from WPCoder will then contact you shortly with a price and a target date of completion. If you would like to move forward you will be invoiced for 50% of the payment up front and they will get started when payment has been made. You’ll then see a working demo of your theme and when it gets your approval you will be billed for the remaining 50%. When that payment is made you will get the theme files.

The Client Area

One of the conveniences of working with WPCoder is that they have a great client area where everything is kept. Rather than emailing back and forth, all messages between you and WPCoder will be done through the client area and you will get an email whenever they post a new message (the email also contains the message). This is helpful because all of your instructions for the coder are in one place, and if you need to reference something later in the process you won’t have to go searching through your sent emails to see exactly what you said to them and when.

The client area also contains the PSDs that you upload and your theme files (when it is done) so that you can download. I found the client area to be very convenient and I appreciated that all of the messages from me and from WPCoder were stored and accessible in one location, which reduces the chance of poor communication.

My Experience

I contacted WPCoder over a weekend to get an estimate and I received a response on Monday morning from a manager with a quote and a date of completion. Both sounded fair to me so we moved forward and I was quickly contacted by the coder who would be handling my project. The communication throughout the process was very good and the theme was in my hands well before the deadline.

The quality of the coding done by WPCoder was very good and after testing the theme for a while I really couldn’t find anything that needed to be changed other than separation of the trackbacks/pingbacks from comments, which was requested at the time the project began.

The only negative part of my experience with WPCoder is that it took several days to get the trackbacks and pingbacks separated from the comments. I expected to have a few minor issues that needed to go back to the coder for further attention, but everything else was completely taken care of. However, I was surprised that it took several days to get this corrected. This wasn’t a major issue to me and did not have a significant impact on my overall level of satisfaction.

My experience with WPCoder was very positive and I can definitely recommend their services to designers who want to work with professional coders who will help them with WordPress theme development.

Published August 13th, 2009 by Steven Snell