Why are you so hard to find? I've tried Indians, I've tried local programmers, I just can't find any decent companies these days who can design a good scalable website! Anyone heard of these companies? do they even exist?
I have had the same problem. I think looking at local gets good quality work done but at a cost, and elance and such can be real junk. My solution is learning to do it myself. I know the very basics however my goal is to properly learn php in the next year.
since PHP is open source , establishing a programming "Company" of sorts s rater difficult , most would do it themselves or buy or use free ready-made scripts and modify it to their heart's fill .
When you're not willing to pay a reasonable price for the work then you're going to get garbage out. It seems everyone is looking to pay $3/hr for work that in the real world is $30/hr. The real issue at hand is everyone claims to be a PHP programmer because PHP is very easy. Now could any of them work in a C++ environment or a project that requires a years of development with multiple developers I doubt it. I'm not sure how you'd effectively screen them to find out if they actually go beyond just PHP.
IMO somebody can just know web dev and be great at it. PHP is easy but even so there are not that many people who are truly experienced in it. E.g. there are 20 people that I can think off the top of my head who consider themselves php programmers. Only 2 or 3 of them are truly experienced in PHP.