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Marius L. J. 5:24 pm on December 5, 2017  

Troubles with un-subscribing for some users

@otto42 has managed to track down why we’ve seen topics about users unsubscribing from pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party forums but still receiving emails.

We’ve been seeing a lot of these: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-unsubscribe-from-plugin-support-page/

Short version: They unsubbed from a plugin forum, but still get emails, and the forum also does not show up in their subscriptions list.

Finally, I was able to get it to happen where I could see it happening. Seems that there is a desync between the database and the memcache for subscriptions, sometimes. Dunno what causes it as of yet.

Quick fix for anybody reporting this problem: You, the moderator, or anybody else really, can go and subscribe to that plugin forum that they are having trouble with, and then go ahead and unsubscribe from it. This invalidates the memcache entry and will cause it to rebuild from the database. All subs will be essentially “reset” to what they should be for that forum entry.

If I can sort out the cause, I’ll fix it. Until then, this workaround is easy to do.

Marius L. J. 5:45 pm on November 23, 2017
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November 23rd Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

Our next support workshop has been announced!

Scaling Support: Dip the Data Bucket Every Day – Workshop on January 22, 2018

 

WordPress 4.9

4.9.1 is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday November 28th, with RC1 landing on Monday the 27th. These are tentative dates, and things may change. The 4.9.1 release will focus on the 3 major issues discovered so far affecting users:

  • Broken features due to MediaElements.js trying to validate WordPress locales
  • Editing themes/plugins when using IIS
  • Caching of theme files

There will likely be a 4.9.2 to resolve other issues that may arise and are not as pressing.

 

Checking with international liaisons

The Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Italian and German liaisons stopped by to let us know things are going well. The Swedes have had an influx of both questions seekers as well as providers of late. In Italy they had WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Milano, and in Germany we saw WordCamp Cologne with new contributors from their contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.!

 

Attendance

@anevins, @bcworkz, @bdbrown, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @fierevere, @firoz2456, @jdembowski, @josearcos, @keesiemeijer, @numeeja, @otto42, @pmfonseca, @sergeybiryukov, @t-p, @tobifjellner, @williampatton, @zodiac1978 and @zoonini attended.

 

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

 

Contributor tips
Each pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party and theme have their own support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations., if you are very familiar with something specific, why not give those specific forums a read, you just might find someone you can help!

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 6:04 pm on October 29, 2017
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October 26th Support Team Meeting Summary

WordPress 4.9

WordPress 4.9-beta4 is out, if you can please help with testing, the more bugs we can find before launch, the less work for us afterwards.

In similar news, Gutenberg (the new editing experience in WordPress) version 1.5.x is also out, with a first iteration of the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. box support, so if you wish ot help shape the future, that’s what you’ll want to get involved with at the time!

Checking in with international support liaisons

The Italian, German, Russian, Swedish and Brazilian communities had representatives stop by and take part in this weeks discussions. If you’re doing support in a any other local communities we would love to have you join our weekly meetings so please stop by! It doesn’t have to be a WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ forum, as we understand that various locales function differently!

We’ve enabled the user watch pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party on some more locales, if your WordPress.org forum doesn’t have access to the “Flag Author” link on posts (it should be next to the user notes link) and would like this, please let us know!

A flagged user will have their posts held in the Pending queue until a moderator manually approves them, this is intended for use with users who have misbehaved and we want to ensure they can play nice with others before we let them post without supervision again.

Flagging users

A bit of a followup on the previous lines, when a user is flagged it’s important to follow some fixed procedures to keep track of what is going on.

As such, when a user gets flagged, one should always add a user note, explaining why you’ve flagged the user, this is so that other moderators know why a user was flagged.

When a flag is issued, also always make a reply to the user explaining why they are flagged ,and what this means for them. If the user doesn’t know why they were selected, or that they are in that user classification at all, they won’t learn from their mistakes.

But before flagging a user, try educating them, we’re very trigger happy with flagging accounts at the moment (at least on the international forums), and educating them and adding a user note without flagging them may be more appropriate in many situations (basically don’t punish them for not knowing).

Moderator attendance

This is more a reminder that we expect a certain level of involvement from our moderators, at least on the international forums. We ask that they come by our weekly meetings at least somewhat-regularly or interact with the make/support articles that go up at the very least (we understand that meetings are not always timed well for every participant). This is to avoid having any unused privileged accounts hanging around.

Attendance

@anevins, @bcworkz, @bdbrown, @berksted, @bethannon1, @clorith, @contentiskey, @cristianozanca, @felipeelia, @fevered, @fierevere, @firoz2456, @geoffreyshilling, @howdy_mcgee, @jdembowski, @justingreerbbi, @macmanx, @numeeja, @otto42, @sergeybiryukov, @stephencottontail, @sterndata, @t-p, @tobifjellner, @voldemortensen and @zodiac1978 attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

New contributor tips
If you are looking for a place to start, or have some free time to kill, why not check the list of topics without any replies?

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 4:31 pm on September 25, 2017
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September 21st Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

Global translation day

Global translation day is coming up on September 30th

Debug data in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

The work on a new info.php for core to help with support and debugging has had great traction. For the time being we’ve moved development off to GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/, it will be incorporated as part of the Health Check Plugin, and we will re-visit the concept of incorporating it in core at a later date. The idea here is to promote it as the official approach for checking the status and getting debug information for your own system by the support teams for now.

@clorith has been granted access to both the GitHub and WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party and will help maintain the momentum we’ve had going in so far.

TagTag Tag is one of the pre-defined taxonomies in WordPress. Users can add tags to their WordPress posts along with categories. However, while a category may cover a broad range of topics, tags are smaller in scope and focused to specific topics. Think of them as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post. clouds on the forums

The tag cloud on the forums (found at the very bottom of the forum front page only) has been removed. It was not performing well, and really serves no purpose on the forums as our tag use is so spread out and rather incoherent that it didn’t help anyone.

Tags are still a thing, and that feature won’t go away, this is just us removing the tag cloud on the front page.

Support workshop #2

Our second support workshop is coming up, this time hosted by Taco. Taco does support for a somewhat well known plugin, and we’re really looking forward to hearing from him!

Why solving the problem isn’t enough – A Support Workshop

WordPress 4.8.2

WordPress 4.8.2 is out, and so far we’ve only discovered one potential issues. A function used to make sure database queries are safe has been misused a bit in the past, it’s now been locked down and unsupported features no longer work. Some plugins or themes may have used these features and thus may no longer function as expected.

Checking in with international liaisons

The Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Hindi, Swedish and Greek communities are trotting along and stopped by for the weekly chat to see how things were going around the world.

Attendance

@abletec, @anevins, @bcworkz, @bethannon1, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @fierevere, @geoffreyshilling, @hardeepasrani, @jcastaneda, @jdembowski, @keesiemeijer, @macmanx, @mjjojo, @otto42, @pmfonseca, @sergeybiryukov, @stephencottontail, @sterndata, @t-p, @tacoverdo, @tobifjellner, @xkon and @zoonini attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 3:09 pm on August 4, 2017
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August 3rd Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

WordPress 4.8.1 is out, and it includes the new Custom HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., as well as notices for the existing widget if it enters legacy mode or detects HTML usage.

To help facilitate the potential confusion with the notices, a section has been added to the master list.

It also seems some page builders (and thus potentially other plugins that interact with the editor) have incompatibilities with WordPress 4.8.1, making some controls hidden or inaccessible in the editor. Direct users to their pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party/theme developers to get patches up and running please.

Forum Welcome and Forum Guidelines

Next up, a reminder that the Forum Welcome and Forum Guidelines (for the international forums) now live on the forum them selves, and not to link to the old handbook pages. Sending users into the handbook can feel overwhelming and cumbersome, it’s a much better experience for them to be kept within the forum area.

Rosetta sites can of course still handle their forum welcomes or guidelines in whichever manner they feel is most appropriate for their users, we understand that communities and regions differ in their approaches and the way we do it on the international forums are primarily as a guide for those who wish for something to start off with and build on if anything.

Checking with international liaisons

The Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Spanish and Russian communities are all enjoying the seasonal weather, and have nothing out of the ordinary to bring up.

Open floor

A notice that the img tag has been removed from the forum post creator, this was included with the bbPress2 upgrade, but not intended to be used as we don’t want images from unknown sources being posted as it poses various risks. Embeds from pre-approved sources with proper moderation tools and processes will instead be whitelisted, so we will still allow users to post their screenshots if they wish, but through a safer approach.

Attendeance

@bdbrown, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @denzel_chia, @erricgunawan, @fierevere, @geoffreyshilling, @jcastaneda, @jdembowski, @josearcos, @keesiemeijer, @ketuchetan, @lasacco, @numeeja, @otto42, @pmfonseca, @sterndata, @t-p, @tobifjellner, @vitormadeira, @zodiac1978 and @zoonini attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 6:15 pm on May 11, 2017
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May 11th Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcements

  • We’ve re-allowed clients on IRC using TOR proxies, as we now have better tools to moderate anonymous connections
  • WordPress 4.8 is scheduled to ship betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 tomorrow (Friday May 12th) if all goes as planned

WordPress 4.7.4

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Open floor

  • A request to make WPBot (on IRC) automatically handle users with foul language was put forth, and will be carried out at our earliest convenience, but by the end of next week at the latest

Attendance

@clorith, @contentiskey, @vishalmukadam, @bcworkz, @vitormadeira, @erricgunawan, @cristianozanca, @t-p, @sterndata, @zoonini, @bdbrown, @sergeybiryukov, @kidsguide, @otto42, @liamdempsey, @tnash, @pmfonseca, @zodiac1978 and @ketuchetan attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

James Huff 5:24 pm on May 4, 2017
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May 4th Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcements

  • The 4.8 timeline is up. the first betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. is planned for May 12, and the final release planned for June 8.
  • The Community Team is looking for feedback on a new type of WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more..

WordPress 4.7.4

We have nothing new to add to the known issues for 4.7 this week.

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Attendance

@macmanx @clorith @erricgunawan @bethannon1 @vitormadeira @bdbrown @cristianozanca @t-p @kidsguide @contentiskey @geoffreyshilling @numeeja @sergeybiryukov @sterndata @keesiemeijer @geost @vishalmukadam @abletec @jcastaneda @stephencottontail @fierevere @jdembowski @mattdevelop @otto42 @hardeepasrani @anevins @ketuchetan attended

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

James Huff 6:59 pm on March 30, 2017
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March 30th Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcements

WordPress 4.7.3

We have nothing new to add to the known issues for 4.7 this week.

Supporting Themes from Jetpack

There was some confusion around how to support the themes installed by Jetpack. Quoting Support Team member and Automattic Theme Whisperer @zoonini:

1. vast majority of those themes already in the .org repo
2. small number of themes either waiting in the review queue or not yet submitted (due to one theme in queue rule)
3. small number of themes forked but not different enough to submit back to .org

if you see any in categories #2 or #3, please just add “wpcom-theme” tag and I or one of my colleagues will be happy to reply if it’s not something you’d like to handle

And, of course, if it’s a theme covered by categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. #1, just direct them to the specific theme’s support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/, just like any other theme in the official directory.

Theme Installation Confusion

Speaking of themes, we’re noticing an increase in folks mistaking the theme directory’s Upload Your Theme section for a way to install themes on their own site. For now, here’s a predef you can try:

https://wordpress.org/themes/getting-started/ is for developers to share the themes they make with the entire WordPress community.

To install themes on your site, follow this guide: https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes#Adding_New_Themes

Additionally, please DM @jcastaneda in Slack with links to any reports of the confusion so the Theme Review Team can find the best way to improve the situation.

Meeting Time

We held the final courtesy “Is this still what we want?” vote regarding the decision to change the meeting time from the March 9 meeting. Holding the meeting at 16:00 UTC continued to receive majority support, so the meeting time will continue as-is, meaning that the next meeting will be Thursday, April 6, 2017, 16:00 UTC.

This was the final vote, so the meeting time will not be changed again until most of us switch back to Standard Time, or some other situation arises that would necessitate changing the meeting’s time.

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Attendance

@macmanx @bcworkz @clorith @geost @jdembowski @t-p @bdbrown @kmessinger @zoonini @alchymyth @sterndata @contentiskey @sergeybiryukov @sage-chara @jcastaneda @lukecavanagh @bethannon1 @georgestephanis @kenshino @stephencottontail @abletec @fierevere @imazed @hardeepasrani @otto42 attended

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

James Huff 6:34 pm on March 9, 2017
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March 9th Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcements

  • Please make sure that you have upgraded to WordPress 4.7.3.
  • Please make sure that you’re using the latest Also Viewing script, released about a month ago (and most recently updated last week).
  • We don’t know how much longer the Codex will be around, so please link to the new Forum Welcome in our Handbook for all appropriate instances, rather than the old one on the Codex.
  • Please be aware of some proposals for deprecating support for certain browser versions.

WordPress 4.7.3

An issue affecting certain file uploads was fixed in WordPress 4.7.3, so it has been removed from the known issues for 4.7, but we have added an issue where MP3 uploads are split into two files.

Meeting Time Change

Daylight Savings Time will be arrive for many of our contributors on March 12 and for most of the rest of our contributors on March 26 (with a few lucky contributors who never have to observe Daylight Savings Time).

We held a vote on whether we should keep the meeting at 17:00 UTC or move it to 16:00 UTC, and moving the meeting to 16:00 UTC won with the most up-votes and absolutely no down-votes, so we’ll be moving the meeting to 16:00 UTC effective next week.

This means that the next meeting will be Thursday, March 16, 2017, 16:00 UTC, which is the really the same time for anyone who will have their Daylight Savings Time change on March 12, and only an hour earlier for the rest who won’t change until March 26 (unless you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to observe Daylight Savings Time).

Because time zones are complicated, we’ll hold a “Is this still what we want?” vote during the next meeting and again during the March 30 meeting.

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Attendance

@macmanx @clorith @bcworkz @otto42 @jmdodd @zodiac1978 @katzwebdesign @bdbrown @t-p @liamdempsey @bethannon1 @geoffreyshilling @sage-chara @kmessinger @hardeepasrani @numeeja @zoonini @sergeybiryukov @kidsguide @abletec @sterndata @stephencottontail @logankipp @lukecavanagh @jdembowski @lasacco @samuelsidler @pmfonseca @jcastaneda attended

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat

James Huff 7:17 pm on March 2, 2017
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March 2nd Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcement

  • Please make sure that you’re using the latest Also Viewing script, released about a month ago (and most recently updated yesterday).

WordPress 4.7.2

We have nothing new to add to the known issues for 4.7 this week.

2017 Community Summit

The Support Team’s invitations to the 2017 Community Summit, and topics which we would like to participate in (based on those that passed with a majority vote), have been officially proposed.

Handling Non-automated Spam from Flagged Users

If you encounter automated spam from bots (or really terrible users) that you intend to BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., please do mark it as Spam, that will never change.

However, if you encounter spam from a user that is most likely human who you intend to Flag (or who has already been Flagged), please simply Archive it. Spam is emptied regularly, which means we lose it as a historical record quite often, but the Archive is forever and handy to refer to for questions like “I wonder how bad that spam from this possibly reformed user was?”

Linking to the Forum Welcome/Guidelines/Rules

We don’t know how much longer the Codex will be around, so please link to the new Forum Welcome in our Handbook for all appropriate instances, rather than the old one on the Codex.

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Attendance

@macmanx @samuelsidler @fierevere @sergeybiryukov @bcworkz @clorith @zodiac1978 @kidsguide @kmessinger @t-p @bdbrown @cristianozanca @hardeepasrani @voldemortensen @wido @abletec @zoonini @sterndata @otto42 @jdembowski @stephencottontail @bethannon1 @imazed @tnash @ipstenu @johnjamesjacoby attended

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#weekly-chat