I needed 5 landing pages for my website, and the freelancer had to be proficient in Elementor Pro and Astra theme. However, he does not even have access to Elementor.
I showed him some ideas for the landing pages. I told and showed him a premium wordpress theme I had really liked that I purchased, but the code and imagery kept breaking so I finally abandoned it. He asked if I just wanted those landing pages from the theme with working code and images. I was fine with this, but I think he may have bitten off more than he could chew once he saw the code and the sections I wanted from the landing pages within the theme.
I finally suggested a workaround of using this theme, rather than constructing those pages to integrate onto Astra, fixing the coding that kept breaking, and just making the blog on that theme identical to my Astra theme as far as appearance in padding and other elements.
It was just an idea as I could see he really seemed to be struggling with making this happen, even though it was his idea. He seemed to like this idea because this gave him the already created landing pages and he just needed to correct coding discrepancies and images breaking.
However, he asked me for access to my cPanel so he can install a subfolder to create the site using my Elementor Pro, but the subfolder just acts as a new website so he cannot use the Elementor Pro on my license here. He asked me to check out the theme and see what I thought of his progress thus far. All of the pages images are still broken that he asked me to look at.
It has been 3 weeks and I see no real progress. Bear in mind, it was him that suggested using the old theme. I would be fine with 5 unique landing pages. I don't even know if I will have the skill to test the coding he says he has fixed when the time comes, and his lack of having the resources (Elementor Pro) which he stated he could do before any of this is troubling. I may not have thought that was necessary initially (testing the underlying code, assumed trustworthy enough to assume this would not be an issue), but now I am not sure of the quality of product he ends up giving me with all of these red flags.
Furthermore, he waited a week to even accept the contract, the whole time we were talking and working the project like he had. Still being relatively new to Upwork, I thought it had already been accepted when I chose him. I almost felt like he was seeing if he could do the project first before accepting. He only accepted after I asked if he wanted to use the premium theme and fix the coding and add the blog appearence and elements from Astra to it which would save him a ton of time.
My main concern in the end is a working theme that looks nice (ie the 5 landing pages on my theme I use, whether it be Astra my current, or him fixing the other theme up). I have about $1300 on the project which was for 5 landing pages. He has been very polite and friendly. My main concern is an end product I am happy with that looks nice and functions properly. Reworking the old theme was not necessary, but it allowed him an already functioning site and landing pages he just had to clean up the coding on and ensure images did not break if their devs update the site.
Is there something like project quality assurance or supervisors you can hire on here for that at a cost efficient price? Is that something that I should look into? Any advice here would be appreciated.
Please note I am fairly new to Upwork and have only hired two freelancers for two prior projects that worked out well. So please be constructive in any criticism to anything I may have done wrong here on my end. As stated, I just want an end product that looks nice. This is a fixed price project.
