[wp-forums] Support for non-repository-hosted Themes

[Andrea Rennick]

+1 on general principles as well. I get theme-specific questions in the
multisite forum as well (and even plugjns but that's a lesser  issue and
general have the same exchange.

Personally, i try and get a sense of exactly what they are asking. If it's
not specific to the theme, i'll answer it as well as point out the answer
applies to most themes. That's my way (futile or otherwise) to try and help
educate the user as well. Many of them especially new users, don't know what
the theme controls and what doesn't.

I try and sound friendly & helpful when redirecting people who seem like
they got a sketchy copy of the theme they should have paid for, and let them
know I'm assuming they just didn't know.

There's a really fine tipping point in the questions that's nit quite easy
to define, exactly when to send them to the original shop.

I know some of the bigger places are more than happy to come and get stray
customers when they post in the .org forums as well. Makes everyone look
good. ;)

a.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 3:36 PM, esmi at quirm dot net <esmi at quirm.net>wrote:

> on 08/07/2011 17:30 Chip Bennett said the following:
>
>
>  What are your thoughts on making it the official policy that the WPORG
>> support forums will only provide Theme-specific support for
>> repository-hosted Themes? This policy would address not only the issue
>> above, but would also eliminate issues with Themes downloaded from sketchy
>> third-party sites.
>>
>
> I think that, as a general principle, this is a great idea. From a
> practical perspective, it means that volunteers on the forum don't have to
> keep explaining why they can't offer any real help with commercail theme X.
> Also, I have a nagging feeling that some of the less ethical premium theme
> sites are trying to pass of all of their support to wordpress.org and
> that's just plain wrong whichever way you look at it.
>
> In terms of providing support links, I agree that the contextual help is
> not that intuitive for users yet but, if it became a requirement under the
> Theme Review Guidelines, perhaps the forums could start to actively
> promote/advertise it to users?
>
> Mel
>
>
>
>
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-- 
-- 
Andrea Rennick, http://wpebooks.com
Co-author of WordPress All-In-One http://rml.me/aio