It’s 5 am and here I am not being able to sleep because I have a couple of ideas about the forum. 
I thought I would pass them on and see if we can discuss these later, (maybe at the wpcs?)
I find myself repeating 2 things over and over again in the forum. 1) Please provide a link to your site 2) …making a child theme would be good idea. Here are some instructions….
1) Could this be “solved” by adding a text field when people first submit the thread? The field could be optional, but at least if it’s there, people might use it.
2) When theme developers submit a theme, it might be a good idea, to provide a folder for the child theme with the styles.css ready to go with proper commenting and instructions on how to get started. Not sure if this would fly by the theme reviewers. I noticed that Emile’s theme – Responsive – has a folder for custom templates with instructions on how to use it. There are tons of tutorials on child themes, yet so many questions about them. This might encourage them to get started.
Anyway, these ideas were in my head and keeping me up, back to bed.
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:20 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
We’ll keep coffee on hand for you in a few hours.
The ‘please link!’ is actually below the text box, but I think if the ‘Dude, CODE TAGS!’ gets missed so often, we’re not going to get a huge amount of traction on the link field. Also you don’t always need it (75%?).
Now if we had an auto-reply bot, like .com, that would pick up catch phrases ‘Hi, you seem to be asking about your site display, but you didn’t include a URL. Please consider replying with your link so the volunteers can review your site and provide help…’
My tl;dr thought is unless we make ‘em required fields, they’ll just be more clutter :/
Andrea Rennick 1:54 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
They added the link field to wp.com, which is great. I *think* it’s required but am not sure.
And I’ve seen the support-bot at wp.com as well. Yes, we need it.
Sheri Bigelow 12:06 pm on September 1, 2012 Permalink |
Yep. It’s required on WP.com. We actually pull a dropdown list for logged in users even. It doesn’t always work (some users ignore it and pick whatever), but most of the time it’s super helpful. The ticket form gets A/B tested quite a bit. Here are the current forms for WP.com tickets and forums if you’re interested (and for reference).
http://f.cl.ly/items/3R411t2l0A260M3u291O/Screen%20Shot%202012-08-30%20at%2011.50.18%20PM.png
http://f.cl.ly/items/2U2r1q2g3E040X0y0L0r/Screen%20Shot%202012-08-30%20at%2011.38.44%20PM.png
Christine Rondeau 3:29 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
I had to check that again. Of course you’re right.. I tend to skim things so, perhaps a text field would be better and you’re right again, making it mandatory would be better.
Otto 2:31 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
Child themes were never intended to be a way for end-users to preserve their information/changes. They just ended up being used that way, because it was handy.
Now, I’d recommend using the Custom CSS functionality of Jetpack for most theme modification instead of using child themes. It’s amazing what you can do with just CSS tweaks.
Christine Rondeau 3:31 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
I haven’t checked that new feature in JetPack yet. I’ll make sure to look at it.
Sheri Bigelow 3:30 am on August 31, 2012 Permalink |
+1 for Custom CSS, it was just released in Jetpack
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:04 pm on August 31, 2012 Permalink |
I like it, I;m just snarky it requires wp.com authentication
dkatowitz 6:29 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
I am sorry if I am posting this comment in the wrong place. I have used WordPress for my website and blog since May. I am wondering how I might be able to view statistics regarding views of the various pages. Many thanks.
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 7:17 pm on August 28, 2012 Permalink |
Yep, this is the wrong place
Go to http://wordpress.org/support (This blog is to discuss how to better support, not where you get help 
)