[wp-hackers] Advice on providing plugin support

[esmi at quirm dot net]

on 15/07/2011 15:24 Chip Bennett said the following:
> The WPORG support forums are a great solution, especially if the
> Plugin is hosted by WPORG. Each hosted Plugin (and Theme, for that
> matter) has its own dedicated forum, with its own RSS feed, which
> makes monitoring quite simple.

If plugin authors post links to their FAQs & documentation in their
readme  so that these links then appear on their WPORG plugin page, I'm
sure the regulars on the WPORG support forums would happily direct users
back to them.

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/> is a good example
of this, in my opinion and I've posted those links a lot. But
asking a WPORG support volunteer to start searching through your site
for documentation might be pushing it a little too much.

Auto-appended subjects also make it a lot easier to distinguish WPORG
plugins from "other sources". The former are more likely to get some
basic troubleshooting help from forum volunteers as well.

Callum Macdonald asked:
> How do you provide support?

eShop has its own forum on quirm.net and we do try to push that support
link out via the plugin too. Right now, I'm running 95% of the support
and I have to be pretty draconic with thread management to keep it under
control.

> I'm working on expanding the FAQ, but people seem to miss it.

We've also got a ton of documentation that I'm always adding to. And, 
yes, it seems that many people don't bother to read before posting but 
at least I can answer many initial queries with a quick link copy'n'paste.

I've been doing some form of IT support for about 20 years now and I'm 
not sure that there is a perfect support solution. It all boils down to 
a few simple processes, a lot of wrangling and the option to be able to 
say "Sorry but I've now done all I can to help" in some situations.

Mel / esmi