Comments on: Plugin Programming Tip: Your Users Don't Read.

By: David Gwyer

David Gwyer — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:55:44 +0000

We get plenty of support e-mails from people where we politely tell them at the end of the response that the best place for theme support is in the dedicated forums.

What do they do? Just reply to the e-mail with another support question.. I don’t know whether they just don’t trust the forum, or think they will only get a timely response via e-mail. Who knows.

What we do now which seems pretty effective is to answer the question in the forum (with the original question included) and just reply to the e-mail with a link to the forum post.

By: Improving WordPress Plugins and Themes: Your Users Don’t Read | WordCast - WordPress podcast, Blogging podcast, Blogging news, WordPress plugins, WordPress themes, WordPress news

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:20:49 +0000

[...] Users Don’t Read By Lorelle VanFossen, posted Jun 21 2010 at 4:19 am | View CommentsIn “Plugin Programming Tip: Your Users Don’t Read,” Otto once again gets right to the point that all WordPress Plugin authors – and Theme [...]

By: Otto

Otto — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:53:05 +0000

After 2000 posts, I’m starting to think a support forum for each plugin may be a requirement.

Maybe I’ll build a better one into Extend on WordPress.org.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:26:37 +0000

I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while now. It works really well.

I was being inundated with people as questions about how to write their own CSS, so I just wrote a CSS generator so they could make their own. It immediately plummeted the number of questions I was getting to a trickle in comparison to the previous torrent. Amusingly people still ask questions about how to edit CSS despite the changes they’re looking for being possible in the CSS generator, but at least those questions are lightning quick to answer (copy and paste “You can do that via the following CSS generator …. “).

I have a standard template in GMail for responding to free support requests too which saves a lot of time for me:
“Hi,
For email support please try our Premium Support service (URL removed). For free support, please try our support forum (URL removed).

cheers,
Ryan
“

By: Poor user interface design in iTunes

Poor user interface design in iTunes — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:25:37 +0000

[...] all, it’s a well known thing that people don’t read things properly, and instead just look for the most obvious buttons to click [...]

By: Ajay

Ajay — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:37:56 +0000

I understand this perfectly! Setting up the support forum was some relief. I still get emails from lazy users who refuse to use the forum.

Emails get ignored.

By: Otto

Otto — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:33:23 +0000

Ignore it. I just forgot to update the version number. If it bothers you, go edit the plugin and update the version number to 0.16.1 manually. There were no changes in that one.

By: Patrizio Palazzetti

Patrizio Palazzetti — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:32:11 +0000

Nice job! I have a problem with the User Status Widget, it keeps showing that needs an update after updating it several times (autoupdate)