Items discussed at this weeks’s Support Team meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.:
List of non-English support forums in the handbook
@justingreerbbi had brought up this great idea. When someone posts in the support forums in a non-English language they’re sometimed helped by native language speakers or forum members using an online translator. That last part is often not a good experience for the original poster. When a 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. for their native language may exist they are often directed to post there.
But a list of those other forums was scarce and Justin suggested that that be placed in the Support Handbook. That was a great idea (much thanks Justin!) and that was setup at this URL in the Support Handbook.
That’s an ad hoc list and if you see an active native language support forum that is missing then please post a new topic in Requests and Feedback and tag it “modlook”. Include the link to that sub forum and that will be considered and added.
Note that I wrote “active”. 😉 This is not an invitation to post any links and all submissions will be vetted.
WordPress 4.1 RC1 and the OMGWTFBBQ draft post
Please, please, please test WordPress 4.1 RC1.
If you use the WordPress 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. tester 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 then be aware that it will switch you to the current nightly which is 4.2-alpha. If you get switched and want to test 4.1 RC1 then you will need to manually install it.
The alpha/beta sub-forum has been quiet lately and that’s got some concerned. If you do see a post there then once a tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket has been submitted then please post the ticket link in that topic and mark it resolved. Don’t close the topic.
If you see something in the 4.1 OMGWTFBBQ draft post that needs adjusting (I plan to do update it slightly today sometime) then please reply in the comments for that post.
Support accounts from companies
I really thought about naming this item “Much Ado About Nothing” to remind me to relax and drink even more coffee. 😉
There was a conversation related to a company providing support in the forums and putting their logo in the GravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/. and company reference in the account names. The concern was that that was marketing and it may be close to inappropriate.
It’s not a problem and that was explained well by Mika. Yes, advertising in the forums is not good but if you are promoting your brand in the forums by providing awesome support then that’s great and fantastic. After all, the forums are for helping people and if a company is doing that then they should be lauded for doing so. They are awesome because they are helping WordPress users and using their own resources to do that.
Later on, a person from that company introduced himself in the #forum SlackSlack Slack 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 clarified that a) they’re there to help and are good folks and b) if there’s any concerns then just pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” him and it will get looked at. They are doing that support for the benefit of the WordPress community and are following Matt’s advice.
That’s very cool. Imagine if more companies put that effort into the forums like that?
The transcript of this meetup can be found at this link.