Web development is a vast field of the IT industry, and probably very likely the biggest. The field itself can be fairly fragmented and for a company looking to have developed a web application, or even a website, things can get very confusing if they are not in the loop in regards of the recent trends. Granted, once there is a web project in place one has little else than just to roll with whichever web development platform it was built on, but for a new project it is not so simple if you do not have any guidance.
Choice of the web development platform is one thing, there are other complications we are dealing with here, which is on what conditions should a web developer be contracted and last, but not least, what rates to expect to be charged? Which amount is reasonable to hire a developer locally for, and if outsourcing is considered to be an option, does the cheaper rate justify potential difficulties when the web developer is located abroad, possibly several time zones away? Note that we are talking about Dublin web developer scene here but the general principle should apply anywhere.
Choose web development platform
As been mentioned above, if you already have a website that you would need to update and/or maintain, things are a bit easier since the choice of the platform has been already made and it is the easiest to follow along and you simply need to find a web developer that works in that specific area of web development. However, if you need a new site, or develop a web application, there are several options of languages/platforms:
- Custom PHP
- ASP.NET
- Node.js
- Python
On top of that it is up to you to decide if you would be willing to go with custom bespoke website/web application development, or if you would need your web developer to use a preexisting platform or a content management system. Using an existing solution as a starting point generally can save web developer's time and thus client's money, that is if you are not trying to do something with it that it was not intended to do.
For example, using Wordpress as a starting point to develop a social networking web application would be calling for a trouble, however if you want to build a regular corporate site with a blog and some more or less standard niceties like contact form, currency conversion rates and such, going for a Wordpress developer services would be the right choice. Conversely, if the goal is to develop something that goes beyond a regular website functionality (say something similar to AirBnB) then chances are that custom web development in any of the languages outlined above may be the route to go as it will be a lot more flexible when it comes to custom functionality.
So, you have decided whether you want to go for custom development, or reuse an existing CMS now, but that still leaves us with the question of which language from the list above to choose. Frankly, the choice may not be that difficult to make as the languages are listed in the order of their popularity as backend web development tools, so PHP would be far the most popular one with PHP web developers being quite abundant, with ASP.NET being less popular and web programmers harder to come by while Node.js as well as Python being distant third and fourth.
Why should you, as a client, care about in which language your website is being developed in, whether it is a popular one or not as long as it does its job? There is a good reason to care about that for a non technical manager/business owner when investigating their web development options, and the name of this reason is competition. The more offers you have on a market of a specific service/product the more fierce the competition making the price more affordable. This holds true for web developers as well and PHP programmers are possibly the most affordable while ASP.NET developers are generally expected to charge higher rates.
Also, in such a volatile industry like web development if a company needs to look for additional web developers, or look for someone to hand over an existing project, the competition makes it easier to find a candidate. You may have a harder time looking for an experienced ASP.NET developer in Dublin who also prefer enterprise projects in general, while a good PHP developer with experience with Wordpress plugin and theme development may be easier to come by.
There is another aspect to choice of web development language, and that is the performance of a given one, however unless you are in need of a high load application (corporate websites are rarely that) the speed of the current hosting solutions generally allow not to worry about the speed of a specific language in many situations.
Local or outsource web developer?
This is the question that probably every business owner in need of a website (or web application) developed asked themselves. The potential savings look very enticing as foreign rates can be around 20 euro per hour or so, while local Dublin rates are expected to be in the range of 40-60 euro per hour if you are hiring a freelance web developer, and if you are hiring a company the price tag may be considerably higher than that.
With that said, quality of work is an important factor and that tends to decline as the price goes down. That is not to say that quality web developers are not to be found in developing economies, it is the hassle that is involved in finding out whether a specific offer is decent may not be worth the time and money spent on it. It is notoriously difficult to manage a project where the contractor is located several time zones away with potential language barriers, not to mention the issue of accountability. If something goes wrong it is much easier to bring the justice to someone who is nearby!
However, there is a drawback to hiring a local web developer that does not seem to be mentioned often and that can be an issue for Ireland. There are plenty of online services that offer freelance web development services that provide outsourcing options, however they are appear to be international and are not very specific to Ireland. Other countries tend to have established local online services for advertising freelance services of all kinds that are often the place to go to for a company that is looking for a contractor, but for some strange reason, historically there has never been a service like that for Ireland.
There were attempt to implement that but they never seemed to take off. Large Irish job advertisement sites occasionally post project offers for freelancers but they are far and few between and there have never been a systematic approach in this area on their side. Sites like jobs.ie have plenty of critical user mass and resources to successfully launch some sort of a freelancer hub for Ireland but it does not seem like they are particularly interested. Individual attempts have failed due to inability to attract an initial number of users, both advertisers and freelancers, sufficient enough for the service to take off.
Despite that, at the end of the day it can be summarized that Ireland is a vibrant digital economy nowadays, with Dublin being its central hub. There are plenty of offers found on the Internet of companies whose service is web development and there are many freelance web developers with high standards of work who also have websites and thus are not hard to find. As usual, there is always a word of mouth so even if you are a bit too wary to contact a potential contractor via cold approach, a reference from a fellow businessman surely will get one over the first step to a brand new web application, or website.