Get expert advice, talk to a consultant.

I’ve had many occasions in which I tried to figure something out myself. This is fine as long as you have time, but if you’re limited on time your best best is usually to talk to someone that has the expert knowledge that you’re looking for.

I did this before when I was figuring out some options for the Spotify platform. Sure – I can read through all the documentation to figure out if something is possible and if so – how I should structure that, but is it worth it? If I can speak to someone over the phone for 30 minutes and pay a fair amount for that, wouldn’t that the better choice?

In many cases it is..

The result for this Shopify case was that it wasn’t possible at all. The platform is structured differently and I wasn’t aware of that limitation, and the documentation doesn’t provide that information either. It’s something that you just need the experience for.

A WordPress consultant

WordPress is a platform with a lot of flexibility. You can spend hours and hours on trying plugins and themes to see if you’re able to get to the end result you have in mind.

As a WordPress designer or long term user you have a pretty good idea of what you can and cannot do and how to accomplish this but in many cases it still makes sense to consult with a developer first, especially for the complex projects.

I’ve had countless of situations in which (paid) plugins weren’t providing the expected result for the WordPress user while a couple of lines of code, combined with well-known established plugins provided exactly where the user was looking for. Think of Advanced Custom Fields integrations, handling Gravity Forms form submissions with and without payments.

Always consult an expert

I do this with Marketing, I do this when I buy a car, I do this for house renovations. I always discuss any major project before laying the first bricks.