Alex got “stuck with debugging” and so we have agreed to cancel the contract. On negotiation of the contract, I was keen for him to build the application from scratch. He persuaded me that the quicker approach was to modify an existing application (e.g. phpBB). No longer am I persuaded: for a non-standard application whose functional design is yet to be worked out, I believe that it is better to trade the security and robustness inherited from an existing application for the speed and flexibility of a lightweight proprietary application.
Hiring non-local programmers (through sites like Scriptlance) to do non-standard jobs, so far, has not proved effective. I will still use Scriptlance but will be more inclined to hire local, and therefore more expensive, programmers – you can knock on their door.