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  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:06 pm on May 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: alpha/beta   

    Open Alpha/Beta Tickets 

    Only twelve (thirteen if I count the one that I don’t even know what he’s asking…). If you can jump in and help out, remember to link to trac and mark the ticket resolved if there’s a trac ticket :)

    1. post_content interception, doesn’t work anymore
    2. Duplicate title on media manager
    3. Attachments page under 3.6 – cannot display post_content nor additional fields
    4. 3.6 post-format video -> display video player pre-save?
    5. A possible issue with (marked resolved by user)
    6. Aside Glitch (post formats – marked resolved – assuming this is an ‘as desired’)
    7. Update screen displaying new default theme as Twenty Twelve (the whole ‘update’ screen is still 3.5 actually)
    8. the_post_format_image renders full post for standard posts
    9. Link post format- creates 2 links (title and post)? (Twenty Thirteen only)
    10. Wrapper of “edit_form_after_title” and “edit_form_after_editor” hooks optional? (ticket opened)
    11. Video player generate thumbnails? (looks like mediaelement doesn’t do this automatically?)
    12. Return to page edit from revision comparison (possible UI tweak needed)

    ETA : Nine moar!

    1. the_post_format_image renders full post for standard posts
    2. NetBeans IDE7.3 Error Messages (probably not an error)
    3. 3.6 beta 3 showing WordPress 3.6-beta2-24237. (not a huge deal)
    4. Updating posts published before WP 3.6 (will you lose revisions from 3.5?)
    5. custom post type post formats revert to “post” post type
    6. .MOV Media Extension No Play?
    7. More Tag not visible in the Visual Editor
    8. audio in posts 3.6 beta version
    9. Server disconnection. (probably a user specific error)
     

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 10:06 pm on April 16, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Forums   

    Alpha/Beta Needs Love 

    Posts in Alpha/Beta that need help either solving or triaging. Once we have a trac ticket that’s accepted and picked up for a bug, we can mark the post as resolved (since we don’t expect to debug more in the forums).

    Anything that isn’t ‘resolved’ is fair game :)

     

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:00 am on April 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Draft: OMGWTFBBQ 3.6 Upgrade Post 

    This post is the DRAFT of my regular forum sticky for new WP releases. What I’m hoping is people will chime in with important factoids I’m missing. The ‘—-’ breaks indicate separate posts. I do them that way so each section is easier to edit and add content down the line.

    Remember that the sticky is a LIVING post. While it will be closed, mods and admins can edit it and add more data as it comes to light. In fact, I totally encourage that. Don’t bother asking if you can, if you have the access and you know that something’s missed, just add it in!

    (More …)

     

    • Keith Messinger 6:15 pm on April 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      For disabling plugins, can we say don’t forget the MU folder if you have one? Some seem to panic when they don’t have a MU folder.

      Thanks,
      Keith

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:16 pm on April 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Already in there “Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old”

    • Keith 5:10 pm on April 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I meant add “if you have one” or “if you are using the MU version” as some get confused when they don’t have a mu-plugins folder.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:14 pm on April 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Do you mean like this (if not, just write it out and show me what you do mean, it’s way easier than me poking you to elaborate when you’re totally encouraged to be a part of the writing process):

        “Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder, if you have one. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old”

        And no, we don’t want to say ‘if you’re using the MU version…’ for two reasons:

        1) It’s not MU it’s Multisite
        2) You can use mu-plugins on a single site

        • Keith 3:59 pm on April 12, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          Yes, that is what I mean.

    • Jess 11:09 pm on April 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Super nitpicky editor hat on:

      “we delete bumps on site” should be sight

      “make your own topic unless your problem is 100% exactly the same as someone elses” add apostrophe in else’s.

      Also I like Esmi’s language from the forum guidelines: “Unless you are using the same version of WordPress on the same physical server hosted by the same hosts with the same plugins, theme & configurations as the original poster, do not post in someone else’s thread.”

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 5:37 pm on April 4, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    WordPress 3.6-Beta has landed for @andrea_r‘s birthday.

    http://wordpress.org/news/2013/04/wordpress-3-6-beta-1/

    PLEASE test :) I will send you cookies.

     

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:26 pm on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    IRC Meetup Time – 2000 UTC 

    We’ll probably go over, but we’re moving BACK an hour thanks to DST in the US and the others who asked if we could :)

    http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=20&min=00&sec=0p1=0

    See you tomorrow!

     

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 1:38 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Forum Mod Cleanup 

    I’ve cleaned up the forum moderator/admin list.

    • If you’re an admin or a mod who HAS NOT posted in the forum in over a year, you’re now a member.
    • If you’re an admin who hasn’t posted in 6months, you’re a mod.

    Of the lof, 24 out of 25 were absent 12+ months, even a bunch of Automatticians, who are (yes) members now. Custom titles are applied where appropriate.

    Everyone gets the 30-second thinf removed, since you were trusted once, we still trust ya a lot ;) Ditto Akismet Always Trust.

    Let me know…

    • If you think I got you by accident.
    • If you think I SHOULD have dropped your access level (i.e. you wanna retire)

    IMO if you only post once a month, and you still help out, there’s no reason to dump you unless you go postal over people and need time out ;) The next round of picking new admins and mods will start with the 3.6 release. How do you get picked? Be active, be helpful, don’t lose your blob. Showing some initiative is always good, knowing when someone’s trolling is great. Most of the time, we start with you as a mod, which is limited, but when you’re a super star, that lasts as long as how annoyed I get having to block users for you.

    What? You thought this was an exact science?

    If you think someone should be an awesome mod (or shouldn’t be one anymore), feel free to ping me publicly or privately, as you see fit. I trust your judgements!

     

    • Aaron Nimocks 1:59 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      What’s trolling?

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 2:09 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

        tl;dr: Someone who posts to piss people off, rile them up, and not provide anything constructive. Ever.

        You’ll hear me say “Don’t feed the trolls” when people get into arguments with them. You can’t win, just walk away ;)

    • Maeve 2:58 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I would be interested in becoming a Mod. I do a lot of support on my plugin forums but would be keen to do extend that to the general forums and help out a bit more.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:05 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        We actually look for people who, without being mods, go help in the general forums. As a plugin or theme dev, helping in your threads is expected, to a degree. It’s the above and beyond that ends up with people being moderators :)

        • Maeve 8:03 am on March 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          Ok cool, no worries – thanks for the info :-)

    • Eric Hoanshelt 5:07 am on March 30, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I would love to be a moderator :)

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:54 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: irc, questions   

    What Forum Tools Would Make Support Better? 

    Today in IRC we discussed what tools might may supporting in the forums better. For those

    We started with this scenario: You’ve written a theme or plugin.

    • How do you handle the forum posts today?
    • What do you wish was there that isn’t?
    • What annoys you about the forums the most?

    The goal of this is to get an understanding of how you, as a person who supports your own work, uses the forums, and what pitfalls do you see.

    From IRC:

    Reply-by-email: You can already get emails of any new post in your plugin threads (Go to http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/PLUGINNAME and here’s a link for “Subscribe to Emails for this Plugin”), so what if plugin authors could email back?

    More obvious subscription tools: Speaking of the “Subscribe to Emails for this Plugin”, it would be nice if that was on the http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/PLUGIN/developer page, as a list for the Subscribe links like this:

    • Development Logs (commits) [RSS|Email]
    • Support Posts [RSS|Email]

    “Warnings” – so if someone’s being bad, moderators (and plugin/theme devs in their support forums) can click +1 or -1 on their name and set a ‘mood.’ or warning level.

    Plugin Version: A way to list plugin version (can be auto-populated from the broken form?)

    Throttle: A button to ask for the 30-second block to be lifted. Or automatically do it based on time served/products released/general coolness.

    More ‘Support Type’ options: This is a feature request, this is a support request, this is a you-suck.

    Flag POST as spam: We can do topics, but not posts (or Flag Topic vs Modlook). Imagine emails to wp-forums “JerrySarcastic has flagged the following post as probably spam… {link}” This would have to be limited in usage though. I would say plugin/theme authors in their threads only.

    For moderators in general we came up with these:

    Better Profiles: If you click on the IP, you go to the backend of bbPress and see all posts by IP. It would be nice if we could do that with usernames too.

    TacNuke: One click to delete all posts and ban the account (for spammers)

     

    • Daniel Bachhuber 10:07 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      ++ to reply by email. We have some code on WordPress.com that can probably serve as a basis.

      Can I get past the 30-second throttle please?

    • keesiemeijer 10:28 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      @Daniel Bachhuber
      Done.

      For moderators in general:
      +1 for one click to delete all posts and ban the account
      +1 click username and see all posts of the user in the backend of bbPress

      And maybe someway to leave a note we can use to indicate reasons for mod actions like b-coding.

    • toscho 10:38 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      What exactly is the 30-second throttle? Does it mean I cannot edit my own posts after that?

      • keesiemeijer 10:52 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        It means you can only post a new reply 30 seconds after your last reply. You can edit your own posts up to an hour.

    • esmi 11:17 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Reply-by-email: Not one I’d touch with a barge pole myself!

      Warnings: I’ve tried this in another forum I admin and it was nothing but a recipe for disaster, complaints and general bad feelings. So much so that I was asked to remove it after about 12 weeks. I don’t see this working at all well on support forums where 5/10 posters are already bad tempered, upset or otherwise frustrated.

      Plugin Version: That might be a nice addition.

      Throttle: +1 for the button. Can general coolness be derived programmatically. ;-)

      More Support Type options: Don’t see how this would really help plugin or theme developers really. Not unless there were associated filters.

      Flag POST as spam: Don’t see that this would cause any harm but not sure how it would differ from the modlook tag? It would be just one more feed tag we’d have to watch.

      Better Profiles: +100

      TacNuke: +1000

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:26 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        The flag post as spam would let us know which post, exactly, was the problem (and thus I don’t get an RSS feed of 70 posts when a spammer hits up an old, long, thread). Also what if that emailed the wp-forums list? “Esmi has flag this post as spam: ##LINK##”

    • Diana 4:14 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      +1 for one click to delete all posts and ban the account
      +1 click username and see all posts of the user in the backend of bbPress
      +1 better profiles (I would like to keep rss feeds from users activities on forum)
      +1 status, add tag and move topic with one button click or remove/add tag without page refreshing.
      +1 batch move and delete
      +1 manage actions should stay at right, close to add tag, status
      +1 can add replies to fixed topics no matter how old they are, at least to the fixed ones (because they keep read me first, notes etc)
      +1 can change permalinks

    • Frumph 5:31 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I would like it that if I DO get a message about one of my themes that I actually get notified by email that there is a support question I need to answer (new one)

    • Bryan Hadaway 5:58 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      If we’re totally just abandoning the idea of http://make.wordpress.org/themes/2013/01/13/theme-support-link/ (which is the most ideal solution) then plugin and theme authors need to be upgraded to at least mod permission level so that we can properly manage our own .org forums.

      Thanks, Bryan

    • Bryan Hadaway 9:06 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I don’t think plugin/theme authors should have forum wide modding privileges either, that would indeed be awful. Just for their own forums.

      There’s already a check that recognizes the plugin/theme author in the specific forums, you’ll see next the username “Plugin Author” or “Theme Author”. If that same check could also give the user at least somewhat higher privileges that would be awesome.

      Now, that I think about it, it’s not really a suggestion anyways because if we’re going to get improved tools, those would obviously not be available to just everyone anyways, correct?

      Also, you bring up another excellent point to why a Support URI would be helpful. If authors intended on supporting their own users/customers then that would become obvious with those authors that are using the Support URI and general forum mods could focus just on the other .org forums instead.

      Here’s the ultimate issue:

      1. I would like to support my users/customers on my official forum (I don’t I’m even close to being alone on this one).

      2. If I can’t do just that and also need to try and keep up with odds and ends that end up in the .org forums, then I at least need the control and not other mods.

      While the idea on paper sounds great, general forum mods helping out on ALL .org topics wherever they’re found this actually becomes problematic if they’re closing topics, giving directions or answers to my users/customers that I don’t feel is the best quality or best interest of my users/customers.

      I include customers in the equation because I really have had customers show up asking questions in the .org forums because of this fragmentation.

      Before someone brings it up, of course closing our official forums and directing all customers to one unified forum on .org is not the answer. I’m sure most authors have had fully established websites, blogs and forums well before submitting to .org.

      Plugin/theme authors contribute plugins and themes to the WordPress community abiding to the GPL and other requirements, end of obligation. Let’s not split hairs here, the 23,152 plugins in the plugin repo and the 1,667 themes in the theme repo have a huge impact on the success of WP overall.

      Like Chip brought up, there’s no requirement for authors to provide support on .org itself. That doesn’t mean that we just don’t care, but many of us already have official forums where we have full control and all the tools we’ll ever need.

      Frankly, I don’t think all the tools in the world are going to solve these problems (certainly not the redundant forum issue), that a basic freedom like a Support URI would solve.

      But, I digress… if we HAVE to put up with the auto-creation of plugin/theme forums every time we want to submit something, it’s an absolute must that we be able to freely close, open, sticky, edit or delete topics/replies in our own forums. Before someone jumps all over the “we don’t delete” policy I mean in the rare event of spam, or personal attacks or duplicate topics by the same users getting in etc.

      • Samuel Wood (Otto) 11:49 am on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        it’s an absolute must that we be able to freely close, open, sticky, edit or delete topics/replies in our own forums

        Stickies, maybe. Edit/delete/open/close: absolutely not.

        It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I don’t trust anybody. Not really. Too many theme authors would simply abuse such power and delete any questions they didn’t like or remove any bad reviews they got, etc. Same goes for plugin authors.

        You don’t have to support your plugin/theme on .org if you don’t want to. But you deal with the results of that.

        Part of having your code hosted by .org means that people are going to come here and ask questions about it, whether we make those forums more visible or not. People were asking questions about your code in our support forums before we made that support tab on your theme/plugin page. Now you have the opportunity to see those questions more easily. Telling us to hide them again in favor of giving you additional offsite linkage isn’t solving the problem, which is that your users are not getting the help they need.

        • John Gardner 1:57 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          what about the ability for plugin/theme authors to delete their own posts?

          • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:36 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            You mean posts they made vs posts, say, I make in their sections? That would make letting them have a local sticky easier…

            • John Gardner 4:40 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink

              Correct… If I make a sticky post, for example, it’d be helpful if I could delete it should the post no longer apply

        • Bryan Hadaway 7:17 am on January 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          I think there are points for both sides, but much stronger points for the Support URI for an overall best well-rounded solution.

          The rebuttal against the Support URI/official support forums situation is ironically the same argument for those of us that have good intentions at heart that want a Support URI.

          Let me try and show you my side of what should get priority (being a bit extreme to paint a very clear picture). WordPress, who cares. Me/my company, who cares. We’re ONLY talking about what is ABSOLUTELY BEST for the user and NOTHING ELSE.

          Yes, many users will end up back on .org looking for help, BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER. They’ll ask for help and it might be tumbleweeds in the forum. I see so many theme/plugin authors ignore their duplicate .org forums because they have their official forum already.

          Now, I’m not one of those people. I’ve signed up for 3rd party RSS feed to email notifications so I can get alerts instead of manually checking everyday on .org. This has worked okay. And I’ve tried educating people to use the official forum where I have much better tools and means to help them including the exchange of sensitive info.

          I can sticky topics and make sure they get their eyes on documentation, known issues and other important updates. In the .org forums I’ve made important notes about how to seek official support and that will get buried eventually even though we all know people don’t read the fine print anyways.

          So, for those of us that actually have official support forums and even our own knowledgeable communities dedicated to specific themes and plugins with the creators/developers right there ready to help with all the tools they could ever need, THAT IS the very best place for users to get help, hands-down.

          So, putting aside WordPress’ interests, putting aside author’s interests and let’s not even remove, obfuscate or redirect the auto-generated forums or the “View support forum” button, but why not create a Support URI option that will place, in addition, above that “View support forum” button, perhaps as an orange button, “Official support available” (or something to that effect) that links to the official forum?

          There is absolutely no downside to that, in fact in only manages to inform the users and give them more options and make them aware, especially for those that ask questions in ghost town forums, never get an answer and never even knew there was somewhere better they could ask for help. This is about user-friendliness and ease of use and nothing else after all, right?

          Thanks, Bryan

          • Samuel Wood (Otto) 7:00 am on January 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            If people get their software from WordPress.org and get the plugins from WordPress.org and see the forums on WordPress.org, then saying that they should have gone to your other site for support isn’t them “not knowing any better”.

            If you want to put all the support and community and information on your own site, then you should put the primary location for the theme/plugin downloads from there too, for consistency. Otherwise, you’re the one confusing your users by having the plugin available somewhere where you do not also support it.

            • Bryan Hadaway 12:10 pm on January 21, 2013 Permalink

              Of course I’m not saying people should just magically know there is an official forum for them to use, that’s the point. Naturally, they will return to .org for support. That makes sense, no one is arguing that. And at this point I don’t think anyone is talking about eliminating plugin/theme forums or redirecting them anymore (though that was basically Emil’s initial idea which started this ultimate discussion).

              All that we’re saying now (yes we, the majority of authors I’m sure have official forums for their software where they can provide endlessly better support) is how about adding a feature that informs them that there is actually an official forum specifically for the theme/plugin they’re using where they can get the best and quickest support?

              And that is the question that Chip has posed, are we moving towards a place in which just to contribute something to .org we also have to provide support there too, mandatory?

              That’s what it feels like you’re saying without really saying it and it just doesn’t feel like the right move. I mean there are only about 2k themes in there as it is (that’s really not very many for the years that have gone by). I agree with Chip that this would seriously put a brake on the frequency of theme submissions to the free repo, which are pretty low as it is.

              The thing is most authors did host their own software and forums ALREADY, well before ever submitting something to .org. And a lot of that stuff wasn’t even GPL. They made the effort to GPL it and get it ready to submit to .org. Why? To share their works with as many people as possible, making it easier for users to find what they need.

              I don’t think everyone who submits to .org even realizes that a forum will be auto-created for it. And I doubt there were any who ever had the mindset that once they submitted to .org they were going to shut down their official forums and redirect people to .org. Official forums were always there first.

              The theme/plugin forums on .org really only serve a purpose to pick up slack for authors who are either negligent, never intended on providing support in the first place, officially or otherwise or I’m sure the rare occasion where they don’t even have their own website so that is the only place for them to use to support their users.

              The specific auto-created forums for plugins/themes will never be the dominant place for support because they usually come after, which naturally makes them redundant in many cases. This really isn’t a subjective opinion. This is just a basic fact. Look at the most popular themes, then checkout their website where they all have thriving communities with forums, documentation where more times than not there are even paid employees there answering questions every single day, maybe even in shifts and doing so professionally, let alone all the extra features and archived topics for them to look through to find their answers. The official forum will always be the best place for a user to get support.

              To even suggest anything along the lines of “Well, don’t contribute themes/plugins here unless you’re also going to use the forums here to support them.” (paraphrasing) isn’t good for users (not sure who that’s good for?).

              The moment of possible confusion where a user realizes “Oh hey, this isn’t the official place to ask for support?” (and learning there is somewhere better) is infinitely better than putting a new filter/rule in place that will slow the progress of new themes and plugins being added in one searchable place or the ability to find them directly through their WP admins.

              An author contributes a plugin/theme to .org where it is reviewed and filtered to the specification demanded by WP. End of obligation. They’ll gain more recognition for their works and WP just got stronger as a more popular CMS platform that offers thousands of plugins and themes. It’s a fair trade already.

              Of course we all hope that authors will take care of the users that use their stuff and that they’ll keep their works up-to-date and working for users and WP. This isn’t a debate about whether to support users or not, it’s about the best way. Since you’ve made it clear that authors will never have mod rights for managing their own forums on .org, then that’s just one more reason that official forums are the best place for specific theme/plugin support, though that never changed anyways. That’s always been the case.

              Just take a look at the most used themes, then compare the official forums with the .org forums and ask yourself where you think the average user would prefer to ask for help, given the option. Try this out as an experiment. I can almost guarantee when looking at the data you’ll see a lot of clicks on the “Official support available” button and authors will see an increase in more questions on their forums and less straggler questions on .org that go missed altogether sometimes. Better organization and response time for users and authors, win win.

              It seems pretty black and white what would be best for users. But, we’re only talking about the compromise of informing them and giving them the option. I say this as politely as I can, it kind of seems like you have tunnel vision over .org when WordPress, its users and the many developers by a great length transcend the actual wordpress.org website. If we’re not discussing simply what’s best for users regardless, what exactly are we discussing? Perhaps I am indeed misunderstanding something.

            • Bryan Hadaway 1:09 pm on January 21, 2013 Permalink

              Also, point and case:

              http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/

              Redirects people to the official forums:

              http://bbpress.org/forums/

              Makes perfect sense as those forums were already established. Well, many other themes and plugins also already had forums established.

              In fact the bbPress plugin page really is doing exactly what Emil’s initial idea was and not even compromising and informing the user that there is an on .org forum solution as well:

              http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bbpress

              So, it’s already being done, yet in a less user-friendly way than even I’m suggesting at this point. This needs improvement. Then, everyone needs fair and equal access to this same feature.

              Does that not sound fair? Is this not something you’re willing to explore? If it’s a simple no, well, then there isn’t anything more to discuss. But, it still doesn’t answer the valid points people have been making.

              Thanks, Bryan

            • Chip Bennett 1:24 am on January 22, 2013 Permalink

              Except, the vast majority now get WordPress via one-click installer from their host, and they get Themes and Plugins from their own WordPress install’s WP-Admin dashboard. So, I’m not sure that the underlying assumption here is still valid.

              (p.s. “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” still isn’t working, network-wide for all the Make sites, as far as I can tell.)

            • esmi 3:23 pm on January 22, 2013 Permalink

              Plugin and theme authors can add details of any 3rd party support forums to their readme.txt file and Theme Description if they want to point users in a specific direction. I also add links the the Help tab in my theme’s options pages and in plain text on the same page. As result, about 75% of my users go to my own forum. But I still think that anyone hosting an add-on on wordpress.org should offer some forum of support there too. Even if it only to point people to the right places. Forum regulars will happily do this too if you let us know where to point people to.

          • Samuel Wood (Otto) 7:02 am on January 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            In the .org forums I’ve made important notes about how to seek official support and that will get buried eventually

            The mods are more than happy to sticky the posts into the view of the forums for your theme/plugin. Have you asked them to do so?

          • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 6:19 pm on January 21, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            Most plugin authors do not have their own method of support if they host on .org. Most plugin authors did not host on their own sites.

            Four or five years ago, that might have been the case, but it’s not anymore.

            So with the understanding that the goal of this discussion is to make the .org support forums better for

            a) The user who posts in .org
            b) The developer who hosts their plugin on .org
            c) The volunteers who moderate .org

            Can you help with that? Can we please, for the purpose of this post, stick to just that?

            We can’t handle everything all at once, and I tried to keep the scope small so we could look at one part at a time.

            • Bryan Hadaway 9:53 pm on January 21, 2013 Permalink

              I’m primarily referring to themes.

              There are a lot of differences between the theme and plugin sides, so yes… it’s a bit difficult to talk about them both in the same general subject.

              My suggestions (as well as others) are that we need more control if we’re going to embrace on .org support (should we or users be left with no other options), there really is no other bell or whistle that will replace that, but we’ve hit a brick wall on that subject.

              Anyways, I’ve definitely exhausted all the points I wanted to make on this subject, nothing further to add.

              Thanks, Bryan

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:42 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I have to second Otto on this, and I wish I didn’t.

        If you saw the volume of, well, whining brat emails we get over ath plugins for people who are pissed off that (a) someone didn’t like their plugin and left a bad comment and (b) they responded with insults and vitriol which (c) make them look bad…. Well.

        The only way around that would be to limit the plugin/theme devs to people who aren’t going to have stupid days and act like over-entitled children. That just won’t fly. We’re trying to let anyone in who wants. So while we want to be welcoming, people have proven we can’t do things like just accept any code without review, and also that the majority aren’t mature enough to handle that responsibility. If you ARE and you’re active, you may get mod’d anyway just because we like that :)

        But. You don’t have to support your code in the forums! I have always said that, unless other wise DOCUMENTED, however, users have a reasonable expectation that they’ll get support here. So how do you get around it?

        1) Put it in your readme. At the top so it’s the first thing a plugin sees. “This plugin is supported at…”
        2) Have it in your FAQ
        3) Put it in your plugin’s admin page if you have one.
        4) DO follow the forums, and reply with ‘I offer minimal free support on the forums…’ (for things like “How do I activate it…” when your answer is “Put in your API key. If you need more help…”).
        5) Be honest and firm, without being mean.

        Is this more work? Yes! But in return, you don’t have to handle hosting or distribution or server security :D

        Even if you’re not hosted here, you’ll still get asked questions here (see StudioPress, or every single webhost), so yes, you end up spending time keeping tabs on it.

        • Chip Bennett 7:23 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          But. You don’t have to support your code in the forums!

          This statement is in direct contradiction to Otto’s statement, here:

          In my opinion, if they want to provide support on their own site, then they should host their theme there as well.

          You’ll find Theme developers coming to comment here under the assumption that the WordPress project is expecting them to provide support for their Themes via the WPORG forums, based on the outcome of the Support URI thread over at Make/Themes.

          So, are we sending mixed signals to Theme/Plugin developers?

          1) Put it in your readme. At the top so it’s the first thing a plugin sees. “This plugin is supported at…”
          2) Have it in your FAQ
          3) Put it in your plugin’s admin page if you have one.
          4) DO follow the forums, and reply with ‘I offer minimal free support on the forums…’ (for things like “How do I activate it…” when your answer is “Put in your API key. If you need more help…”).
          5) Be honest and firm, without being mean.

          So, if all of these means are acceptable, why the resistance to a Support URI as the canonical means by which a Theme/Plugin developer declares their support medium?

          The end result of this dichotomy is that we are essentially telling developers: sure, you can support your code on your own site, but we’re intentionally going to make it difficult for you to do so.

          • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 7:52 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            You don’t have to support your plugin/theme on .org if you don’t want to. But you deal with the results of that.

            Otto said that too.

            It’s not that you hate to, it’s that you’re expected to. And if you don’t, you accept the consequences of these missed expectations.

            Everything I described would, I think, mitigate them.

            We’re saying this “You don’t have to support your code here. People will expect you to, however, especially if your code is hosted here, so you should have a sensible plan of action if you chose not to, and accept that not everyone will be happy with it, no matter what you do. Not that they would be anyway.”

    • Ricardo Moraleida 3:09 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Talking about general forums, not specific plugin/themes, something i’d love to see is some kind of sorting for “popular” questions/answers. IMO, one of the biggest problems we face on answering questions is the amount of repeated exact-matches on the same topic.

      Repeatedly answering the same questions takes out some of the joy/energy of crafting better answers for the unique ones. And the current search mechanism is somewhat inefficient when looking for quality answers.

      If we could somehow highlight best answers, maybe per topic, as some sort of collaborative FAQ, we’d be able to focus more on unique questions.

      As I imagine it, this process could be semi-automated by auto-selecting the most-viewed Q/As and letting forum MODs select which ones get fixed to this “special” section (the FAQ), where we could direct OPs. This, combined with a new status type, say, “Redirected to FAQ”, could clear up the queue quite a bit.

      • Abhishek Ghosh 8:33 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Fully agreed. In many cases the question is an old question, asked and answered at least 4-5 times. Many never runs a search to find it.

        • toscho 8:46 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          On Stack Exchange we close these questions as Exact Duplicate with a link to the original.

          • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:16 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

            I half like that… The problem is that (at least on the forums here) people don’t have the exact same problem a lot of the time. Similar, but not the same. Mind you, I also don’t use predefined replies most of the time, since I like to read what the person said, and how, and reply in their language as best I can.

            I’d rather have a ‘Codex Answer’ so we can like to not another post, but an ‘official’ answer, and they can easily reply “Tried that, got this…”

            • Ricardo Moraleida 6:24 pm on January 19, 2013 Permalink

              A Codex Answer seems to be a good fit, I think. Makes me wonder if we’ll be able to find enough hands to do that on localized forums – which brings me to the problem of not having enough active moderators, who could solve things by closing and pointing duplicates like in WPSE.

              At the same time, closing the question just doesn’t solve the problem on WP forums, because it only makes sense if finding good anwsers (not just any answer) to the same problem is a no-brainer.

              Thinking about how the forum search works, it occurs to me that maybe we could try something different, by improving good anwsers based on raw SEO:

              This is a wild (and spam-risky) guess, but if we implemented something like the WordPress SEO meta box (http://s-plugins.wordpress.org/wordpress-seo/assets/screenshot-1.png?rev=609774) to the forum answers – mod-only, perhaps? – we might be able to better sort questions/answers while sticking to the Google search tool (and also improving general Google searches).

    • John Gardner 4:38 pm on January 18, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      This is not completely related, but on the plugin review screen, I’d love a drop down that would allow the user to select the plugin version (or default to the latest release) in addition to the WP version. That would give some potential context to negative points in some reviews where those issues may have been addressed in later releases.

    • EnigmaWeb 2:12 am on January 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      +1 for Warnings
      +1 for implementing some sort of method to better manage duplicate posts
      +1 for higher privileges for plugin developer on their OWN plugin forum

      + 1 for Plugin Versions….
      My biggest frustration is users who don’t do basic troubleshooting and/or who don’t provide basic information that I need in order to provide good support.

      I find myself constantly asking users to post a link to the affected page, post what version of the plugin they are using, and do basic troubleshooting steps (like deactivating other plugins) before I can help them… and this takes a great deal of time!

      Obviously we can’t force people to isolate the error themselves as many don’t have the knowledge to do so, but we could encourage users to select plugin version, WP version, and field for ‘Affected URL’?

      …while we’re at it, maybe a checkbox ‘yes i checked the FAQs and looked for existing posts on this topic’?

      • Ian Dunn 5:52 pm on February 4, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        +1 for asking users to post the URL to the page on their site where the problem can be seen, and for encouraging them to check the FAQ and forums before posting.

    • Jeremy Herve 8:35 am on January 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Reply-by-email: It could be useful.
      More obvious subscription tools: I like the existing Subscription link, but I noticed that it doesn’t appear until somebody posted in your support forums for the first time. That means that I cannot actually subscribe to the support posts for my plugin right after releasing it. I have to wait until someone starts the first thread.
      Plugin Version: I like the idea.
      30-second Throttle: that would be nice. It can be annoying at times! :)

      I would also add:
      Merge threads: mods can do it I guess, but I feel like it would be nice if plugin authors could do the same in their own forums.

      Moving threads from the general Plugins forum to our own dedicated forums: would it be possible to automatically move a thread into dedicated plugin forums when that thread is tagged with the plugin name?

    • Chip Bennett 1:30 am on January 22, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Some tools that would be especially helpful, as someone who supports both a Theme and Plugins:

      1. A way to attach and display screenshot images
      2. A way to upload/attach files
      3. More-sophisticated inline code, including line numbering and syntax highlighting

    • esmi 1:02 pm on January 24, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I’ve been thinking about the “Warnings” idea and I’ve got another suggestion. What about having positive(+) flagging on topics posted to theme & plugin forums? That way, users could “rewards” devs for good support. I have to say that I get a little tired of many theme authors apparently not supporting their themes whilst those that do usually offer sterling support. I know that people can assess support levels over the past 2 months via a theme or plugin’s page but it would be nice to see something in the forums as well.

    • Griden 1:05 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      In many (if not most) cases, “Support” appears to be a misleading title for that tab. The first time people see it, they get overexcited and expect that there is always someone there waiting to help them build the website of their dreams. 24×7. For free.

      I enjoyed providing free support, reading feedback, and all this communication, but only for the first couple of months. I won’t go into much details and examples – I think most developers know what it’s like to deal with demanding and abusive users. So I decided to invest more time in writing more detailed (free) documentation, and placing a paywall between me and the users who need individual help in addition to that. This is a way to “filter” them, so I have to deal only with those who value my work and my time.

      This is why I don’t provide the expected “support” for my themes here. Not because selling support for my free themes is a major revenue stream for me – it’s not. Very rarely someone would want to pay only to get support for a free product. And I’m sure I’d get way more people interested in my other products if I did provide free support here. I don’t do it because it simply isn’t enjoyable experience 40+% of the time.

      Now, some (hopefully) constructive suggestions:

      1) A “FAQ” page for themes would be great. Just like the way it’s for plugins. This may not be the case for other authors, but I’d love to post additional info there and reduce the need for “support” in the nearby tab :) .

      2) The theme “Reviews/Rating” section might need some attention from moderators. Example: a theme user (quite a few actually) rates my theme as low as he can (1) with the sole purpose to “punish” me somehow because I haven’t delivered the support he expected. But he happily continues to use my theme, so he/she actually thinks it’s awesome. The low rating isn’t helpful for other users though. So would you not agree that badly argumented reviews that lack any sense should be moderated?

      3) A separate “You SUCK!” button would be a great alternative for all who want to express their anger, indeed :) .

      4) As a theme author, I don’t want moderator privileges. I admit that I’m not mature enough for this job. So I, just like the rest of the community, rely on the moderators and their judgement.

      5) If you want me to spend more time interacting with my users, I’d need some guides, tutorials, and psychology consultations on “How to deal with annoying individuals in a calm and mature manner”. I’ve watched some of Ipstenu’s videos, but more is needed I think :) .

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:03 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Is there a better term than ‘support’? Forums seems too… meh. And believe me, the regular mods know just what you mean about abusive, entitled, harassing, annoying, users ;) Which is why I wanted to ask people how we could make it more enjoyable for you (filter out the bad people etc) and the users (get them where they need to be without fighting).

        1) We have a FAQ of sorts. http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome but you mean for themes? Yes, you should have one!

        2) Tag them modlook (or maybe we should have modreview so we know that’s it? Hrm. I hate ‘more’ tags). I do want a button so you can flag a review as suspect. Right now the only person who seems to be able to sort when it’s someone having a legit gripe vs a troll is @otto42 :/ Legit unhappy reviews should stay, though, IMO. Trolls/abusive/scummy ones should not.

        3) *ponder* That seems wonderful and dangerous.

        4) Are there extra powers you would like? No shame in not wanting mod-powers, lots of people who are forum regulars don’t either! Not having them is a lot more freeing that having to be ‘good’ all the time ;)

        5) Challenge accepted :)

        • Samuel Wood (Otto) 4:06 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

          Reviews are new, and we’re still thinking about them.

          Consider Amazon’s review style, where reviews can be marked as helpful/not-helpful by others. Might be an idea. Or something similar. Best to think along lines of community-sourcing information like that.

          But at present, there’s not enough reviews to make this a general-issue. Quantity first. Then we can deal with quality. :)

          The best way to respond to a bad review is with useful information. Remember, you’re not necessarily replying to the review itself, but also to other people who will read the review later. A moderate and thoughtful reply goes a long way.

    • esmi 2:57 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      a theme user (quite a few actually) rates my theme as low as he can (1) with the sole purpose to “punish” me somehow because I haven’t delivered the support he expected.

      They do that for plugins too. Even when you have provided free support. Bottom line: there’s just no pleasing some people.

      But realistically, I don’t see how mods could sort these out. I think the best things you can do is respond to the critical review pointing out exactly what you’ve said here — that they’re still using your theme so you can only assume that they are still happy with it.

    • Jason Penney 7:16 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      One thing that I miss is the automatic tagging of posts in a plugin’s support forum with that plugin’s tag. When you have an issue with plugin interoperability people will often tag a post with both tags. I really like this, but to see all my plugins forum posts I need to look at the tag, and the support forum. It would be nice if the tag grabbed the superset.

    • esmi 9:31 pm on January 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Or the other way around? Have all topics in the plugin’s support forum tagged appropriately.

    • Ian Dunn 12:17 am on February 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      +1 for getting rid of the 30 second throttle, at least in my own plugin forum. After I release an update I usually reply to 5-10 threads letting people know that a feature they requested was added, a bug they reported was fixed, etc. I always get slowed down by the throttle, though.

      +1 for more support type options, too. Literally 90% of threads in my plugin’s forum are requests for new features, or people asking “how can I make it do *this*” (where *this* isn’t something the plugin was intended to do).

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 10:49 pm on January 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    No Chat Tomorrow – Next Chat Jan 8 

    Due to NYE recovery (and 3.5.1 push) we’re not going to have a scheduled chat until the 8th (that’s Tuesday) at the usual time.

    This week, consider it open-office, or if you’d like homework, please go read Open Issues from 3.5 and comment. I’m looking for issues like ‘Google Pagespeed kills the media uploader’ :) Big stuff.

    See you the 8th!

    • 2100 UTC
    • 9pm London
    • 4pm US Eastern
    • 1pm US Pacific
    • 2:30am (Friday) Bangalore
     

    • Daniel Bachhuber 10:56 pm on January 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      When will we be starting the handbooks discussion?

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 10:59 pm on January 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Hopefully the 8th :) @raggedrobins isn’t available Thursday so that was part of the bump reason.

      • Siobhan 11:26 pm on January 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Let’s have an official chat about it on 8th at the support chat. But I’ll be in the wordpress-sfd chatroom all day on 7ths & 8th if you want to have a chat about it before then.

      • Daniel Bachhuber 1:48 am on January 3, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Sounds peachy

    • Aaron Nimocks 12:25 am on January 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Is this open to anyone or just important people?

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 2:28 am on January 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Open to everyone :) If you’re interested in helping make support a better place for everyone, and finding better ways to help folks, we’d love to have you. (If you’re looking to get help, #wordpress is open for that 24/7)

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 11:02 pm on December 28, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Issues from 3.5? 

    So what are the major hanging chads for problems we’ve seen in 3.5?

    Here are the noisy ones I’ve been seeing lately:

    • Cron (posts that are scheduled not being kicked off)
    • jQuery/wpdb::prepare() shenanigans
    • Image uploads (has anyone seen problems with GIFs resizing?)

    I also have two people claiming WP 3.5 upgrade moved their uploads to blogs.dir. Which sounds a little nuts no matter how I look at it. If anyone has an idea, help is welcome.

    FYI I’ve deleted everything that was a complaint, or one-off bug report. I understand that it may seem like semantics here, but I’m looking for bugs more than 5 people have, and I do not mean you and your four friends on your site. Every release will have some one-off bugs. It’s not that I don’t care about those, but that’s not the point of this post :) we’re tying to list, as moderators and volunteers, the issues we have seen come up most often, even if we personally have not experienced them. If you don’t understand the difference, please don’t post here :)

     

    • Joshua 12:27 am on December 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      The “Set image as Featured Image” link that once was available when uploading a new photo is now gone. Now you have to click on the Set Feature Image link on the Edit Post page. Although this is a small change it really disrupts my workflow.

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 9:33 pm on January 1, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        FWIW that’s not a ‘bug’ (not denying it’s a workflow hassle, though!). You can upload images from the featured image interface, but it doesn’t fix the extra clicks.

    • Yassar 2:57 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      i have an issue with handling widgets in 3.5. it did not dragged by mouse. is there any salution

      • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 4:03 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        Yassar – Please post in the support forums. I was looking for major issues that affected 50% of users, say. Yours is likely due to a poorly coded theme or plugin.

    • elsafurtado 6:07 pm on February 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Does anyone know if there is gone be a version of the new gallery with slide and thumbnails?

  • Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 7:58 pm on December 17, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    How do I get started? 

    This question comes up a lot, and my usual reply is “What do you want to do?”

    Here’s a Getting Started primer. It’s very much a work in progress, and I’m very open to suggestions :)

     

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