Welcome to the official blog for the WordPress Support team.
Need help with a WordPress issue? You can find help with your WordPress problem by posting in the support forums or asking on the #wordpress IRC channel.
Want to get involved?
Answering a question in the support forums or on IRC is one of the easiest ways to get started. Everyone knows the answer to something!
We have a detailed handbook to help contributors learn how to work with the forums and IRC.
Weekly Meetings
As well as discussing support issues here on the blog, we use Slack for group communication.
Our weekly meeting is held every Thursday 17:00 UTC, with the first meeting of the month being office hours, and the next will be at Thursday, 17:00 UTC(your time zone) in #forums on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.
WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. US 2023
The onboarding lead would be one, or more, individuals who are available throughout contributor day to help onboarding new contributors, streamlining that process and ensuring availability (which is often hard for a table lead to devote dedicated time to during the day).
We have a few seasoned contributors that will be participating, and will look to share the workload fairly between those who have the capacity.
New (betaBetaA 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.) moderator anonymity tool
As some may be aware, and some may not, a new (beta!) feature rolled out for moderators on the forums this past week 🎉
When writing a reply, there is now a checkbox that will allow you to post anonymously (to the users), under a unified “Support Moderator” user. Other moderators may still see who made the post though.
This will ensure that the team is both able to have the backing of “one voice” in difficult decisions, but also ensure that moderators are not required to post as them selves, and becoming potential targets for retaliation or abuse.
Note that the feature is still in beta, so it may still disclose who posted it somehow, until it’s been properly triaged, but it’s there and you’re able to experiment with it.
If you post as an anonymous moderator, you will still receive notifications of replies to the thread, which is also good to be aware of.
New workflows for discussing forum account actions
A new inbox set up for handling disputes and questions concerning things like flagged accounts.
The purpose of having a common inbox is to bring potentially heated or controversial discussions out of the pubic #forums channel, and also to give the users the ability to discuss their flagged status without being put in a negative light. (We all make mistakes, we can learn from them, and then it’s always nice to be able to do so privately.) In addition, it allows moderators to handle sensitive situations while remaining anonymous, which can in turn reduce potential mod harassment, or uncomfortable situations where a specific moderator is being targeted directly.
In addition, it allows the team to discuss information which may be considered private with individuals, without needing to worry about disclosure of private information in public channels.
WordPress 6.3 is near/here
With the upcoming release of WordPress 6.3, the team had a quick brainstorming session about which topics they believe users may need help with. It is shaping up to be a great release at this time, and only one item was brought up as likely to cause confusion, that being the renaming of Reusable blocks to Patterns.
Checking in with international liaisons
None of the teams international liaisons had any concerns or special events/news to share at this time.
Anyone can apply to join the program via this form. If you know anyone who would be a good candidate, please encourage them to take part. In my case, I have reached out to all the people I met during Contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/. at WCEU and let them know about the program.
Materials
We will need a set of materials for mentees to go over as part of their onboarding. We can of course point them to get Getting Started section of the Handbook and we also have a Support Table for Contributor Day doc we can share but I would like to know what other existing resources you can think of.
While drafting this post, I took a look at learn.wordpress.org and noticed how we do not seem to have any videotutorials specifically for support. We should explore the possibility of creating a simple “Getting Started with Support” video tutorial to facilitate the process.
If you have some experience recording these type of videos (and even if you do not!) please consider recording one. Please share you thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
Mentors
One of the most powerful ideas in this plan is to connect mentees to seasoned mentors who can reply to their questions and guide them through their onboarding. This should not require a lot of time but we do need to know who is available and would feel confortable doing that.
We are considering the possibility of holding “welcome” video calls as part of the onboarding. Aside from replying to practical questions, the goal of these calls would be to create personal connections between mentors and their mentees. Ideally, we should try and hold at least two different calls at different times in order to accommodate for mentees across time-zones.
Please note how there are several ways you can contribute to this initiative, but you do not need to commit to all of them:
Encourage mentees to take part
Recommend existing materials
Create or record new materials.
Volunteer to act as mentor
Host one of these “welcome” calls.
If you are an experienced contributor and would like to volunteer as a mentor, please leave a comment or swing by the #forums channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Timeline & Next Steps
The first cohort is schedule to take place between July 12th and August 9th. We have two weeks to put together some basic curriculum and designate mentees, let’s make this happen!.
This is where news that are relevant or good to know for the team from across the community are brought up and shared.
WordPress 5.9
This week’s big topic!
The “master list” topic is https://wordpress.org/support/topic/read-this-first-wordpress-5-9/
The “known issues” post is https://wordpress.org/support/topic/read-this-first-wordpress-5-9/#post-15286500
As topics come up that might go on the known list, let’s wordsmith them in #forums and then post. And remember to cross-off those that are solved (when point releases occur).
Feedback for the Training folks: Courtney has asked if we see common topics that should/could be address by the #training team with content on LearnWP.
Similarly, we shoud work on a list to feed back to the #core team for their one-week review of the release.
WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Europe (WCEU)
This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.
There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!
Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!
We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.
Open floor
This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.
When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.
It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@sterndata) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.
For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.
WordPress 5.9-beta1 has been delayed, a new date for the betaBetaA 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., and consequently a new release schedule, is not yet announced, but will be posted once it is finalized by the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team.
Team representative nominations are over, and with only one nominee, we have no need to hold a vote. The nominee is @sterndata, and instead of the vote which would have ensured if there were multiple nominees, we will instead have a ~2 week period in which any concerns can be raised, this can also be done privately to @clorith. If no concerns are raised, or they’re all worked out, the final announcement of the new representative will be done after December 1st, and we will prepare a handover period with some onboarding and similar at that time.
Next weeks meeting (November 25th), will be a very informal office hours, due to major holidays being celebrated in parts of the world, and other social events elsewhere, there are not a lot of regular contributors available at the time, so this feels like a good approach.
Open floor
A note was made that often folks join the channel after an incident, quite often relating to something unfortunate happening on for example the forums, and that the users may not feel very well received.
This is in part by nature of guidelines helping us enforce directives, but we can probably also be better at providing a more welcoming surrounding in such cases.
We, as volunteers in the #forums channel, should avoid “piling on” when someone has concerns. Letting one individual handle the case, of course another person may be asked to chime in, but it should then ideally happen at the original attendees request, to avoid giving users a feeling of being outnumbered and of a lesser voice, or may lead to confusion and frustration.
That’s not to say things do not some times escalate, and we know that not everyone wants to accept the answers that are given. If things escalate, and users do not wish to listen, it becomes an unwelcome environment for other participants on Slack, so please escalate such cases to a Slack admin, and they can deal with it from there.
There’s been a few questions, and comments, about access to WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ access being limited from the Chinese region of late, so we figured we’d give some information when possible.
There’s an ongoing issue with a lot of malicious traffic originating from the Chinese region. This is making the WordPress.org security systems limit connectivity from affected areas, and unfortunately also negatively affecting legitimate users.
We’re actively monitoring the situation, and are looking into ways to remedy this for real users, but due to how internet traffic is routed it’s not something that is likely solved quickly.
The Master List is a forum thread created by the support team for every major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. of WordPress where we pre-emptively gather information on what users may face and be confused by, mistake for bugs or need ot be aware of. It’s a living document, and as the release lives on the thread is populated with information of broken plugins or themes that impact a larger amount of users, bugs that are discovered etc. This allows us to have one location to reference for information, and to link users towards for troubleshooting steps.
@bethannon1 will be leading the Support Desk (aka Happiness Bar) at WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. US, and is looking for potential volunteers to help staff it. If this sounds like you, feel free to reach out to her!
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from our international parts of the community in Italy, Sweden, India, Brazil, Portugal and Russia were part of this weeks meeting.
We also looked into if the Master List could be made more easily available for translations for our international crew. @tobifjellner has some good insights on utilizing HelpHub/SupportHub once it’s ready for synchronization between locales, and we will revisit this at that point as it becomes more viable when those systems are in place.
Open floor
A question about process with user management was brought forth, in relation to theme submissions on WordPress.org.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough information to make informed recommendations on the scenarios mentioned, but we invited those responsible to return to #forums with more details for a more thurough check.
Starting with a quick reminder: It’s OK to take a break, everyone’s been a bit on edge with this release, remember that you are volunteers and have no obligations here, walk away and unwind instead if you feel like it, we’ve got this covered.
And as always with major releases, please keep general banter in the #forumsSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. room to a minimum to avoid us missing important shared information after a release.
We hope to have the revised support guidelines released this weekend if all goes well, input is still welcome via GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ though, and we’ll get it moved to a more appropriate location once the first iteration is out.
Representatives from the Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Urdu communities took place in our preparational meeting this week!
Open floor
Some questions for the new editor may need various answers we don’t have a predefined reply for, in those cases you can also reference the plugin sticky topic we’ve used before the release.
WP Support Team is planning an orientation session for new Support Contributor volunteers on Sunday, December 9 at 10:30 am CST, in conjunction with Contributor DayContributor DayContributor 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/. at WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. US.
We will “meet” in the #forumsSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel, and walk through the basics of helping out on the wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ support forums, and give some pointers for getting started. We anticipate that this orientation will last 15-20 minutes.
If you know someone who would like to start helping in the forums, please do encourage them to come and start contributing to WordPress!
To participate, new volunteers will need to create a wordpress.org user account if they don’t already have one, then create an account on Slack and join the #forums channel. If you already have a wordpress.org user account (perhaps you have posted a question in the forums before), then you can use that account.
Long-time volunteers are welcome to participate as a refresher, but we especially welcome any new volunteers who might be interested in helping answer topics in the wordpress.org support forums, whether you are present in Nashville for Contributor Day, or somewhere else in the world. Support is a great place to start helping with WP and give back to the community!
Marius L. J.
2:06 am on October 12, 2018 Tags: Forums
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, it will be in our best interest to go over our guidelines, and refine them. The current guidelines are a wall of text, which are hard to read, and also not easy to understand for the average user.
The goal should be to refine and condense the guidelines into bite-size chunks that are easy to digest for the average user. We have GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ to help us make a more structured page, so let’s see what we can do.
The guidelines are available via GitHub, where changes can be tracked and discussed. Discussions may also happen on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. in #forums as always, but we should ensure that any discussions on the guidelines that take place there are also summarized in a GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ issue.
Following up on our experiments with previous sessions back in December and February, our next Support Volunteers Orientation session will be on April 27, 2018 2pm UTC.
We will “meet” in the #forumsSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel, and walk through the basics of helping out on the wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ support forums, and give some pointers for getting started. Experienced volunteers are welcomed as a refresher.
If you know someone who would like to start helping in the forums, please do encourage them to come and start contributing to WordPress!
We’re pleased to announce the next workshop aimed at sharing best practices in support. The series aims to boost support skills among all those who support coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., plugins, themes, or anything else in the WordPress ecosphere. (Check out the previous workshops here.) We welcome your ideas for other workshop topics or speakers; feel free to comment here, or find us in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
The workshop
Dealing with Angry Users
No matter what product or service you sell and/or support, problems sometimes arise and your users will be quick to tell you about them. These issues can escalate in a heartbeat, and suddenly you’re getting yelled at. In this session, we’ll look at how to help irate users and restore their trust in the product and/or your company.
Presenter
Mindy Postoff is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, supporting users of WordPress.comWordPress.comAn online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ as they work on their websites. She’s worked on the front lines in the service/support industry her entire life, leaving an ever-growing list of happy customers in her wake.
When is it?
Friday, March 16, 2018, 16:00 UTC, (noon EDT) it will run for about an hour and includes Q&A. When adding the event to your calendar, keep in mind that Daylight Savings Time begins in certain parts of the world on March 11.
A link to the Zoom teleconference will be provided in the #forums Slack channel about 10 minutes before the session begins.
How do I join?
The session will be run via videoconference via Zoom, which runs on most desktop and mobile devices. Can’t make it? The session will be recorded and the video posted later – keep your eye on this P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/..
