Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Supporting The Masses (without losing your mind)
Search
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
August 26, 2012
Technology
0
77
Supporting The Masses (without losing your mind)
WordCamp Chicago, 2012
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
August 26, 2012
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
See All by Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
WordCamp Boston - 2013
ipstenu
1
320
Rolling Your WordPress Support Character
ipstenu
0
550
Choosing the Right Plugin
ipstenu
0
190
Get Out Of The Monkey House
ipstenu
0
210
Don't Use WordPress Multisite
ipstenu
0
2.9k
Why WordPress Is not "Set it and Forget It"
ipstenu
2
530
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
Sansan Engineering Unit 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
1
3k
「改善」ってこれでいいんだっけ?
ukigmo_hiro
0
390
React19.2のuseEffectEventを追う
maguroalternative
2
580
難しいセキュリティ用語をわかりやすくしてみた
yuta3110
0
360
クラウドとリアルの融合により、製造業はどう変わるのか?〜クラスメソッドの製造業への取組と共に〜
hamadakoji
0
280
Databricks AI/BI Genie の「値ディクショナリー」をAmazonの奥地(S3)まで見に行く
kameitomohiro
1
370
AWS UG Grantでグローバル20名に選出されてre:Inventに行く話と、マルチクラウドセキュリティの教科書を執筆した話 / The Story of Being Selected for the AWS UG Grant to Attending re:Invent, and Writing a Multi-Cloud Security Textbook
yuj1osm
1
110
Building a cloud native business on open source
lizrice
0
150
OCIjp_Oracle AI World_Recap
shinpy
1
150
サイバーエージェント流クラウドコスト削減施策「みんなで金塊堀太郎」
kurochan
4
2.2k
AIエージェント入門 〜基礎からMCP・A2Aまで〜
shukob
1
140
私のMCPの使い方
tsubakimoto_s
0
120
Featured
See All Featured
Creating an realtime collaboration tool: Agile Flush - .NET Oxford
marcduiker
34
2.3k
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
34
8.9k
The Language of Interfaces
destraynor
162
25k
KATA
mclloyd
PRO
32
15k
Cheating the UX When There Is Nothing More to Optimize - PixelPioneers
stephaniewalter
285
14k
Stop Working from a Prison Cell
hatefulcrawdad
271
21k
Reflections from 52 weeks, 52 projects
jeffersonlam
353
21k
The Illustrated Children's Guide to Kubernetes
chrisshort
49
51k
Visualizing Your Data: Incorporating Mongo into Loggly Infrastructure
mongodb
48
9.7k
VelocityConf: Rendering Performance Case Studies
addyosmani
332
24k
The World Runs on Bad Software
bkeepers
PRO
72
11k
The Success of Rails: Ensuring Growth for the Next 100 Years
eileencodes
46
7.7k
Transcript
How to Support The Masses
Without losing your mind Tips and tricks to keeping it
all in perspective, while still giving people the best experience possible when it comes to support.
Who Am I? Mika A. Epstein (a.k.a. Ipstenu) Over a
decade of supporting technologists, programmers ... and grandmothers
I have the BEST IDEA! It starts with you and
your dream (or desire).
I assemble my code
And it’s awesome!
YAY! Version 1.0.0!!!!!
Wow! People are using my plugin!!!
Not everyone likes it...
http://wordpress.org/support/ view/plugin-committer/YOURHANDLE
Do I want to help them? Do I want to
spend my time doing support? You don’t have to! But....
What’s in your README? • Are there alternate support methods?
• Email, other forums, UserVoice? • Is there no support? • Is there only paid support?
Unless you clearly state otherwise on your plugin page, users
have a reasonable expectation that you will provide free support in the WordPress.org Forums.
Is it really my problem? Valid complaints? Reasonable requests? Not
RTFMing?
Okay, I’m going to help! • Can I reproduce it?
• Have they tried turning off other plugins? • Have they tried using the default theme?
Oh! It’s a conflict!
Should I fix it? • Is it a security hole?
• Is it in the scope of your plugin? • Is the other plugin/ theme behaving badly?
•Be honest •Be direct •Consider patches from users •Ask for
help If you can’t fix it...
What about requests? My users want special features. Well ...
Okay.
It totally needs a unicorn! Yeah, I know it’s an
RSS plugin, man, but think about it! UNICORNS!
JUST SAY NO!
Keep sight of your scope • What problem did I
want to solve with this plugin? • What logical extensions can be added? • What can be easily added? • What can I add and still support?
But I want the unicorn!
You can still say no.
It’s okay to ... • walk away • say no
• get mad • give up • ask for help
It’s not okay to... • blame them (even if it’s
their fault) • be mean • accept abuse • ignore them*
Tips So what should I do?
Document It What it does What it doesn’t How it
works Support options Known/common errors
If you make a BIG change ... DOCUMENT IT!! REMEMBER!
Take Time Think before you answer Study the error reports
Test possibilities Take time for yourself
Be this guy! Walk away from the computer once in
a while
I have a life! It’s ...
Don’t Attack! They’re not attacking you Don’t bite the users
Passion makes people seem aggressive Strong opinions can be misread easily in text!
Don’t be this guy http://xkcd.com/386/ What do you want me
to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!
EOL What if I’m just done with this plugin?
Warn them! “This is no longer supported.” Push a final
version to notify users. Alerts in the admin screen
Hand off? Give it to someone else. Ask someone to
take it over. Email wp-hackers. Post in the forums.
The End