I had a bad experience working with Irene Milhorn, owner of "The Wordpress Expert," a two person…read morewebsite development business.
It started at the beginning of September, 2025. I have an old website,over 20 years old, which naturally was developed on a desktop. This website is large, with many images, and is an informational non-commercial entity. Irene looked at my site, and promptly presented a very reasonable bid: in hindsight, too good to be true.
Irene's bid to update my website was based upon making a few quick and easy wholesale changes, such as changing out the theme and applying a new navigation/directory, which I essentially provided for them. I approved the bid, and three weeks later, I was presented with a test page (the shortest one) with the new Divi theme applied. Upon review, I discovered that the text had moved, becoming misaligned with the relevant images. It then became apparent that each page would have to be worked on individually, aligning the text when necessary, and reducing image size as well.
Since it was now clear that my website job would take more work hours than Irene anticipated, she decided to shelve my project, and work on other, more straightforward, and profitable projects. Irene and her work partner then deceived and gaslit me around the notion that actual work was being done on my site, when in fact, nothing was being done.
Only after the beginning of 2026, and after repeated probing questions from me, like "what pages have you completed so far?" was the real work actually started on my website.
I had been asked to set up a second, developmental website so that work could be performed without having to affect the original site, which I did. On January, 11, 2026 Irene sent me a long email, informing me that "The Website Expert" was quitting my project, effective immediately. In this email, Irene laid plans to close down the project, which included merging the development site with the original site resulting in the udpdated site (new theme and navigation only) going live.
After the merging of the two websites, there were many problems: 280 images were lost, some were still available in my image library, others, dating from the early years of my website, were only retrievable through the wayback machine. Along with the images, the captions were lost; some of these were extensive. Furthermore, the general layout of the website was very jumbled and without question, worse than when "The Wordpress Expert" started work on it.
I had prepared a paper for an international trade journal that was contingent upon completion of the website and referencing it, which I had estimated on an October or November completion. Now that it is February 2026, and the mobile version is still not ready at all, given the publishing lag time of the journal, I will not be able to publish before the annual conference, which I had planned for.
If "The Wordpress Expert" had taken a careful look at my website back at the beginning of September when bidding for the project, I think Irene Milhorn would have seen that the project required more than a few wholesale fixes.
After shelving the website project's real work until after the beginning of 2026, only then "Wordpress Expert" did really discover the inherent problems with loading and picture files, etc. When I went through the desktop version, in late January, '26, aligning text and reducing image sizes, I did not experience those loading problems that Irene reported.
As a result, 4 1/2 months were lost, when this problem could have been uncovered back in late September! If Irene had approached me about quitting then, it would have been far less damaging.
I was not planning to write a Yelp review about my experience, because that is generally not my style. But my position changed when Irene insisted on being paid the remaining payment which was due upon completion of the job. But the job was not finished: they quit.
Between early October, and February, 2026, Irene sent me 12 payment notices for the "balance payment due." Obviously, this was done far in advance of project "completion."
For 40 years, I ran my own small business, which also included projects that would take several months. Now, most of those projects were profitable, but some were not, but I never quit a job midstream. I see here now in Yelp reviews for "The Wordpress Expert," that another client had "The Wordpress Expert" quit on them, so this is not a first for Irene.
I paid the balance, because I pay my bills, but Irene did not deserve it. In the long run it is just as well they quit, because I no longer trust Irene "The Wordpress Expert" with my website and the years of work that went into it.
