Tips on Getting WordPress Help
I am always impressed with the amount of free information available to help others solve WordPress problems. The sad thing is, most people don’t enjoy the benefit of these resources. A lot of people go straight to forum and other support mechanisms provided by the official site or individual sites they know.
They are free to get all support they can get, but often faster answers come from doing their own research. Knowing how to ask the right questions saves a lot of people’s time. Questions will be ignored at best and often flamed.
The following tips will help you get support for WordPress problems. You can use these tips for most technical problems though.
Refer to the Documentation
WordPress has quite an extensive documentation. Consult readme file of the themes and plugins if you need specific instructions on installing and troubleshooting the issue.
Visit the site for FAQ, manual and archive of the blog posts. If possible do the experiment yourself or ask a skilled friend to help you.
Follow the instructions properly. If something is beyond you, ask specifically what you don’t understand, but first read the next point.
Others Have Experienced It…
Your problem may not as unique as you think. Other people may have experienced it and found a solution to it.
Use search engines and site-specific search feature to locate information. See below for tips to increase the chance of hitting the right information.
If You Need to Ask
Only after exhausting the list of resources should you decide to ask the question. Most support is simply asking others to do the steps above for them.
If you fail to read instructions, there is no one to blame but yourself if you don’t get the answers. Many theme and plugin authors are doing great job in providing their work for free, so respect their time. The world doesn’t owe you a thing, especially because you are using free blog software like WordPress.
If you need to ask anyway, here are some tips to help you ask smart question(s).
Choose the Right Forum
You will get faster responses if you ask in the right place. The author of a plugin may not monitor WordPress forum, but they pay attention to the blog comment of the plugin page, for example.
Others prefer email or require that you support yourself, i.e. try finding your own solution or ask in other blog and WordPress forum.
You need to understand that support wastes a lot of time, especially if it is a free plugin or theme. The author has all the rights to refuse support. Pay attention to this factor before using the theme or plugin, especially if support is important to you.
For HTML or CSS specific questions, the best place to get answers to your question may not be the WordPress forum. Look around for HTML and/or CSS forums. Sitepoint comes to my mind.
Use Meaningful Subject Lines
Everyone who is posting in forums needs help, so “Help!” as the subject won’t help at all. Do your best to summarize the issue in the subject line of the forum.
People will be more likely to read and respond if they know the content of the thread. Clear subject encourages clicks.
Be Informative
This is something you can actually help. “My blog won’t load after an upgrade. What’s wrong?” question doesn’t help at all.
Describe what you expect, provide step-by-step information on how to reproduce the issue, and give the server operating system platform and version, WordPress version and plugin or theme version.
Everything is Urgent
Every problem is urgent. Never assume that yours reserves faster answers than other people’s questions. Marking something as “Urgent” annoys people.
Don’t waste the space in the subject line with useless words. Instead, think thoroughly how you could better summarize the issue in the subject.
Proofread Before Hitting “Submit”
Unscrupulous people don’t care to spend extra effort to polish their language. Unfortunately, sloppy persons will almost always not read and follow instructions correctly. Answering questions for careless people may not be rewarding.
You don’t want to establish a bad image by being one of them. Proofread your question before hitting the submit button.
Never Act Clever
Don’t assume that you know better than everyone else. Unless you have examined the code thoroughly, don’t claim that you have discovered a bug.
It helps if you presume as if you are doing something wrong. If you found a bug, you will know it from the answers to your question.
Don’t Forget Your Role
It is not nice to ask others to answer by email or get to you in the way that you prefer. If you ask in the forum, visit it again to check for answers.
Remember that you are asking for a favor. Others who have the same problem will benefit from other people’s answers too.
Finally, Follow Up with the Solution
Again, other people may have the same problem as yours in the future. If you have solved the problem, post a follow up with the summary of steps you take to solve it.
Help others if possible. It is good karma.
Resources
Return to WordPress How-to — Tips and Tricks to Work with WordPress.
Return to Blog Tips for a Better Blog — Blog Building University.
