A new and improved support experience

Posted on October 18, 2019

Forums used to be a big deal

Long ago most themes were supported via forums. Theme frameworks like StudioPress and Thesis used to have extremely active forums of which we were a part. Like so many of our freelance and agency customers we learned a lot from those forum communities, and running our forums has always been part of how we’ve given back to that very same community of learning and sharing that permeates the broader WordPress Community.  

The way people request and digest information online is different these days, and it is much more transactional than lesson-based. In short, folks just want answers to their questions, not lessons. 

As a result of the shift in the way information is being consumed, we will be discontinuing forum-based support and shifting resources to provide the best possible experience for email-only support.

Self-service documentation  

As we’ve evaluated our end-to-end support experience, we’ve found opportunities to make or self-service theme and plugin documentation a bit better as well. As a result, we’ll be focusing on updating documentation to better address the theme setup process and make your life easier in the process. 

We’re also taking this opportunity to move self-service support documentation to a more modern system which will make getting answers to your questions faster and easier. And of course, if you’re not able to find the information you’re looking for, the ‘create support ticket’ button will be nearby to get in touch via email!

Forum sunset plan

The forum content will stick around for the foreseeable future as the information contained in the forums is still an amazing resource to those that want to mine them. They will be branded “community support forums” going forward which means that we will continue to monitor them to make sure the lights stay on, but they’ll no longer be our “official support channel”. Oh, and one last note on privacy — forum posts will forever retain the same privacy restrictions they have now. The public can see that the forums exist and read the post titles, but the body content of forum posts will only be available to logged in users. We don’t want your old forum posts about a client’s website indexed by search engines any more than you do!

As always, please get in touch if you have questions!