 What the forum provides if you're an author of the plug-in or the theme you're going to be auto subscribed to that forum automatically But you can also click that button whenever you like and you're going to get that email every single time whether it's a new thread Or it's a reply to the thread. You're going to get that email There's also and not a lot of people realize this there's also an RSS feed for your thread And that's always found at WordPress org slash support slash plug-in or slash theme If you have a theme slash your slug Slash feed and that's actually just a default feature of BB press Which is what the forums are run on and WordPress itself But that is a useful thing to be able to monitor because you know you could do a lot of different things with RSS feeds So out of the box This is really all you have is email and you know that We all have email right not really not so much it's not a really useful and Effective way to be monitoring threads all the time, but it is there you do get a notification one where another you just have to Be constantly monitoring your email for those for those emails in particular And if it happened last Thursday, and you were here at work WordCamp all this week You come in on Monday or Tuesday you look at your email and it's like way down the list and you missed it So that's why in the tips and tricks. I have a couple other suggestions for how to do this a little bit better than that Cool That one's pretty straightforward. I don't think there's much reason for questions there how to leverage user roles Yes, there are user roles with the support forums. It's not super obvious, but they are there So types of user roles obviously when you become a plug-in author or a theme author They now really tag that really clearly when not every time I reply to a thread. It's going to say right there plug-in author Not on every forum only on my forums And I find that really useful because the users they want to know when the response that they're getting is Authoritative or not it's not like oh I played with this plug-in this weekend And this is what worked for me by some random person which can happen And that's great and fine and everything but when the plug-in author actually says that's a great feature I'm going to consider it for now. Here's a workaround for you The the users typically are really really thankful and and happy to hear directly from the plug-in author directly So that's actually a very useful feature. You don't have to do anything about it. It's just sitting there ready for you There is another new feature this that just was implemented. I believe either late last year or early this calendar year Which you can now add Plug-in support to your your Forum you can add people Directly as plug-in support and when they reply they get a batch now that doesn't say plug-in author But it says plug-in support. This is again being able to indicate that this is somebody who really knows what they're doing About this plug-in. They they're very familiar with it. They know how to provide support for it It's a really useful feature that we use really well on most of our plugins Lastly, there's also a plug-in Contributor I'm going to show just a little bit how you can add people up as a plug-in support in just a second There's also plug-in contributor and These are people who have committed code to the plug-in directly in one way or another This is not done through the dot org interface in any way whatsoever. This is done actually in the Header of your plug-in or theme code So you have a section in your plug-in header that says plug-in name you give it the name You also have an item that says contributors and there you can do a comma-separated list of The handles of any of your contributors to your plug-in One of the side effects of adding contributors to your plug-in is that when they reply in the support forums They'll be labeled as a contributor to your plug-in again That just provides the users with a little bit additional Satisfaction or guarantee that the reply from this person is valuable and authoritative in that way So real quick, how do you add plug-in support roles? It's pretty straightforward But it's in this thing called the advanced view on your plug-in or your theme You have all the tabs across the top and in the right-hand sidebar. There's a little tiny link that says advanced view Click on advanced view and once you're there, you're going to see in the sidebar You're going to see the authors you're going to see the contributors And now there's also a section called support reps and all you do is essentially put their their wordpress.org Handle of that person into that box and click add and they get added whether they like it or not So Roy Sivan add him to all your plug-ins tonight He will love that I Wish he was here to enjoy my trolling, but whatever Roy. I'm gonna just troll him. So he's one of the organizers Tomorrow, I'll get him. I said, no, I didn't say yeah, I'm Matt Romwell I do enjoy support, but not that much Yeah, so that's a great feature any questions about user roles whatsoever, it's pretty straightforward, but it's a nice feature Is that news to anybody is that like, oh, I didn't know that happened at all Oh great. I'm preaching. Okay. See brave courageous everybody else is lying You're like you're like, but I'm not telling Matt that All right All right tips and tricks This is what everybody's here for right tips and tricks because we all are more or less familiar with the forums And in one fashion or another but I got some tips and tricks up my sleeve and if you didn't Go to the slides already Go ahead and do that slides comm slash Matt Cromwell Wc lax 18 and because I have a couple of links there that are going to be useful for you Going beyond what the forum supplies first thing I was talking about how you're going to get all of those emails This is a this is a really simple one. I make sure that I have a Gmail filter I use Gmail, you know every major email provider does filters now in one way or another But I make sure I have a filter so that all of the wordpress.org support forum related emails Go to one place and it's not my inbox I don't want them going into my inbox in any way But I do want to make sure that they're all in one place so that I could see what's new and what's not all the time So when I get in I basically all you need to do is say it's from no reply at word wordpress.org And then has the words wordpress.org forums hard brackets Unfortunately That means that all emails from the entire forums will go in there There's I've looked desperately for the ability to be like if it's from give then do this folder And if it's from something else do this folder again It's a limitation of the dot org forum that basically all they do is just this I love it if they would do like no reply plus give w plea give wp at Wordpress.org or something like that that would be really useful But that's what they provide so a filter a Gmail filter is a really great way to make sure that you could see what's going on at all times and The reason why this is really useful is because it's going to get the new threads and the replies as well So for me, this is my authoritative place where I am doing all of my free support is in that one Mailbox essentially Another trick. I mentioned that it there is an RSS Feed on all the forums you could do lots of things with RSS. I personally make sure that that RSS is going into our Slack channel Because often We're gonna need to talk about whatever ticket that is and we don't necessarily want to do that Publicly on the forums so it goes straight into here into our Slack channel and we call it free support and here you could see that that we are we're chatting about it right there and We also have the system where if this New thread has a reply then we put a little speech bubble as a reply and if it's closed out We put a little check mark that it's closed out That's a little system for us so that we can make sure that we're tracking whether things are done or not I like it the limitation of the RSS feed is that it's only going to give you the new threads It doesn't give you the replies to the threads. That's the limitation of the RSS feed That's why the gmail filter is Really really necessary as well between the gmail filter and the RSS feed I pretty much have all my bases covered and it's where I work. I'm always in my email I'm always in Slack. It's where I work I don't have to be going over to the to the support forum in order to figure out what's going on I know what's going on exactly where I'm working all the time anyway This one is magic prevent duplicate replies I found this through being on the WordPress Slack channel There is a Channel in in the WordPress Slack channel called forums where all the moderators are and they talk about what's happening on the forums And somebody shared this amazing hack essentially If you are on the The slides this is the link right here, which will explain exactly how to do this But what this does is if I go to the wordpress.org forum and I see This up here that means that somebody else who also has this hack installed I don't want to go into detail about how it works that link has everything that you need about it but If somebody else who also has that done It's on this thread right now that I know that they're most likely addressing that issue right now live And I don't have to then also do it because in the past that would happen to me and my business partner all the time We both end up replying to a new thread almost at the same time It was fine when we gave the exact same answer. It was a little uncomfortable when we gave conflicting answers So especially avoid duplicate conflicting answers from two different plug-in authors. That's no fun So but this has really really been great I'm logged in as myself here But I'm seeing that my senior support tech Ben is logged in and looking at that thread right at the moment So I'm not going to touch it. Does that make sense? That one to me was That one's excellent awesome stuff last one rich content in your replies Wordpress by default supports Owen bed, but the forums they specifically restrict Which Owen beds work, but a lot of Owen beds do work So often you're like, oh, I really need to show them a screenshot and there's no tool in order to insert an image Well, you could just paste URL of an image and it's gonna show up if it's on the right platform. So a couple of good examples I mean, I don't know if you're into slide share anymore Yeah, I don't know if that's still a thing but slide share still works If you just paste a slide share URL into the forums if you want to give them like a step-by-step step one Do this and here's a screenshot of it step to do this and here's a screenshot of it That might be a really good way to do that Without you know making a really really long complicated thread that they maybe will never read Soundcloud, maybe you would just want to talk it out. Maybe if you're not so much of a typer. Maybe you broke all your fingers I don't know, but you can create a soundcloud audio file paste that in there And and they'll be able to listen to that right there in the forum itself. These are live screenshots I did I did a big test on one of my plug-in threads I just was like testing o embed and I pasted a whole bunch of o embeds in there And these are so live screenshots of it working Soundcloud works Vimeo works, which is great if you want to do a quick Screencast of the problem and how you're fixing it or how they misunderstood and they need to do it a different way That's a great one YouTube as well is also always helpful and relevant You just paste those URLs in there and they're gonna show up automatically Here's a more Complete list the one I mentioned about images cloud up is a service that automatic actually owns I Really like it because I use my screenshot tool and all I do with in cloud up I just I log in the cloud up and my screenshot tool takes a copy of the screenshot And I just paste it straight onto the screen and cloud up and it uploads that screenshot immediately I don't have to save locally and then upload and all that I just paste the image into cloud up and it saves immediately and it has a URL And I could just paste that screenshot that cloud up URL into the forum and the picture shows up automatically So you're not going to see a preview of any of these embeds when you're writing They're just gonna they're gonna show up after you post it. So Cool questions about any of those tips and tricks Nice. I blew your minds to silence All right, I like my audience passive. I'm just kidding Typically I like to hear like amen. That's what I like to hear Last thing you can know the forums perfectly backwards and forwards inside and out You can know how to do all the own bed stuff You could have ten times more tricks than I have but if you're a jerk you're still gonna do terrible support So in order to really because related to the question earlier about reputation and what are the downsides of the The costs of the forum. This is all public and your names on it And if you're working for a company You're gonna make a negative reflection of your company one thing we've been working on internally as for our support team is a Support manual how we do support in a way that really matters and we have a lot more resources than just this one But this is our tone guide and I feel like this is really really beneficial and useful for providing free support because it keeps you from Being that jerk who's like well, why do you even use WordPress go somewhere else? You know, I see replies like that It happens all the time It's really really not helpful. So Crew it's a acronym if you do pick that up. I try to make it off. Whatever. It's an acronym Confident not apologetic When people come and they like I installed your plug in and it broke everything Don't apologize all over yourself for their situation Generally speaking when you take code and you put it on your website, you are responsible for it And you know what your plug-in does it doesn't do And so you don't need to apologize if you created a problem in one way or another instead start off with confidence and say hey That's terrible. I can't believe that happened But you came to the right place and I can help you out no problem Start off with confidence let them know give them assurances that they're in the right place and that you are the best person available to resolve that issue Results oriented not argumentative. This is the one that I see probably most often in the WordPress world when folks get Support requests that are either very very menial or perhaps the person is slightly agitated Our tendency our natural tendency as as humans is to get defensive and to be like well, why are you using this plug and leave me alone? What do you want? Do everything you can and your power and in your ability to never be argumentative Don't tell them that they're wrong. Don't tell them that they they got it all backwards Just focus on the result that needs to happen What needs to happen in order for them to have success with your plug-in? Just focus on the result never on defending yourself You don't need to defend yourself. You know what you built. You believe in what you built Let it let that part alone focus on the fix Educational not hotty or overly technical This is another one that's really common with developers who developed an awesome tool and end up finding out that they have to do support They say well, this is happening because your PHP is all messed up And it's a you have this other plug-in doing a weird my sequel command in and the user is like I don't care what you're talking about just fix my problem Instead of all of that be educational let them know this does happen from time to time under Circumstances and this is how we resolve those things step by step one two three again That's results oriented and that's not Over-explaining or trying to go over their head in order for you to establish some sort of like weird technical dominance over them Instead it's really just being here. It is one two three. This is how we get it done confident results oriented educational and Welcoming not thankful. This is a weird one. This one took us a long time internally Similar to being not apologetic. You don't need to be like overly thankful. Oh, thank you so much for using my plug-in Nobody in the world is using my plug-in, but you are thank you so much for being here That does sometimes come across as pandering Which is really bad and sometimes it just comes across as like yes I'm the user and I'm doing you a big favor. So now it's time for you to do me a favor being overly Thankful sometimes comes out kind of negatively instead tell it like evoke a welcoming attitude I'm you know what? I'm so glad you're using the plug-in because this is gonna be really good for you This is gonna change the way you do things Welcome to the family be welcoming and not necessarily so thankful and Again, it's like thankfulness is a good thing overall And so it's a kind of a mind switch to start thinking about welcoming instead of thankfulness But it definitely brings results because you show that it also has related to confidence Welcoming is about confidence as well. You are in the right place. Welcome to this plug-in. We're gonna solve your problem And we're gonna get it done Does that make sense? Cool, that's how we get stuff done in our department And that's our our crew our tone guide any questions about the tone guide any thoughts Questions comments. Yes Say it again. How many years? How many years how many years I'm sorry? Oh? How long do the threads stay up there? I Essentially the question is how long do the support thread stay on WordPress.org website. Yeah Two parts there's a couple milestones essentially I believe it's after one year if the thread has been on there for one year The thread is automatically closed out for no more comments And but it's still there and it stays there for forever There they don't have a process right now where they automatically delete all threads Which honestly is pretty fascinating because like that everything WordPress you can go to that thread and then go to like the very last thread that ever and you're gonna find threads from like 2010 you know or 2005 like super old threads and those can sometimes be really really educational Sometimes or it's just you know, I'm also a history buff. So I just think it's cool. So Good question other questions Yes in the back She said the tone guide is fantastic and after that I just was happy so I don't know No, how do you provide? How do you keep stamina for support for free support specifically? I Think there's two parts to that Question or there's two Two different answers to that question One is there's definitely a sense in which you need to make sure that you're not the only one doing free support No matter who you are no matter how small your plug-in is or whatever Try to always bring in somebody else who can do support with you in one way or another That definitely helps a lot because sometimes you're gonna go on vacation. You don't want to beg backlog of support Or are there other times you're just tired and you're just not feeling it or you know that if I answer support today I'm going to rip somebody a new one in the forum. So please protect me from that by you doing support today Like those types of things are definitely Ways to prevent yourself from being really detrimental to your support for sure So those are like taking breaks and having friends. Those are common things Then on the other side This is not the the answer that a lot of people like so much, but Sometimes you just don't have it And sometimes you're just not made for it There is when I'm hiring support technicians. I Really don't care how well they can troubleshoot a PHP function or a JavaScript console error So as much as whether or not they enjoy teaching people You do have to have a bit of a Helpfulness teaching mindset in order to continue doing it Especially because a lot of the questions you're going to get you will have answered it 25 times before You end up having to answer it another hundred times It's you're going to answer the same question over and over again And what you will find the people who are geared for it and really enjoy it What they'll find is that answer that they give will actually start to get better and that really turns them on that really They like that They like being able to just keep chiseling at their skill and getting continually better and Yeah, so I do think it can be taught in some ways But sometimes it's just kind of like you're either that kind of person or you're not That's been my experience at least Good questions. I actually I really enjoy answering the general support questions as well. So any other general support questions? Yeah, let's do one because you've already asked several and then I see another one in the back. What's your first one? Yeah Question is essentially how do you balance the time you spend on support versus how much do you spend on your product? I typically tend to challenge developers who are developers first and support second I tend to challenge them a lot that they should spend the best hours of their day on support first Because the time you spend on support is going to inform the way you code It's going to inform the features that you build. It's going to inform the way that you think about your product in in new and different ways And you want to make sure that you are your best self You know, it's not it's no fun to be coding when you're tired and things like that for sure But if you're doing support when you're tired and angry and pissed off and not enough coffee like this is just not good so I Really challenge folks to prioritize support first and development second for those two reasons because you don't want to be a Jerk and because support will make you a better developer Besides that the exact balance is really up to you. I have a presentation I did here last year about scaling support, which is all about figuring out how much time it takes to actually do support So ping me later afterwards and I'll point you to that which would be a really good resource for just like Analyzing how you do support and how much time you need and how to make sure that you have that time available to do it So John we The nuance the correct answer is we only provide free support on the forums The actual answer is we provide free support wherever we interact with people Because I hate providing support on social media, but guess what I have to do a lot is provide support on social media and We do have a contact form that we monitor religiously and a lot of support happens that way as well But the reason why I always say free support is here is because That is where free support is whether I want it to be or not the free support is there If you have a free plug-in or a free theme on wordpress.org the free support is there and you can't turn it off It's gonna happen whether you like it or not and it's public whether you like it or not So you can't avoid it you can I just don't think it's smart to avoid it And you could try to funnel, but then you're gonna spend time funneling Instead of supporting so meet them where they're at even if it's Twitter DMs. I hate it, but even if it's there Facebook messengers gotten a ton better. Actually, it's almost like an inbox with like you can assign. I know it's terrible, but Yeah, it's still it's still there are it does actually work a lot better Twitter is Nah, but anyway meet them where they are support them where they are And sometimes I just support them as little as possible there and say that's a really good question It's a bit complicated. I can help you a lot better on the forum if you do that I'll funnel funnel them to the forum rather than to our contact forum The great thing though if you do do free support somewhere else is you capture those emails They can opt out and opt in and those kinds of things But I don't see that as a big enough benefit because I can't monitor super well how much time is spent over there so Good questions There's nobody here. So I mean should we party or should I be all done or? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah question Yep, there's two the whole wordpress.org support forum is actually built on a plugin called BB press And and it is available for free for anybody to download and use first support if they like and you could do that Publicly like the wordpress.org support forum does or you can lock it down that they could only ask questions If they log into your site either way you could do lots of things with it It does need customization in order to really for it to really be a good support forum But it is there and it's available. There's another one that I do like that has some limitations, but it's called awesome support It is free and it has some paid add-ons as well But I recommend that one as well Yep I'm gonna go ahead and be done because uncertainty kills me. So thank you everybody so much