[wp-forums] dealing with fundamental CSS, PHP, and HTML topics?

Thu Oct 4 19:16:41 UTC 2012

I put in a short stub:

=== Commercial Products ===

If you use a commercial theme or plugin and need support, please go to 
their official support channel. In order to be good stewards of the 
WordPress community, and encourage innovation and progress, we feel it's 
important to direct people to those official locations. Doing this will 
provide the developer with the income they need to make WordPress awesome.

Francisco de Azevedo wrote:
>
> Ok, cool, that's exactly what I think.
> In that case, do you think including that in the Forum Welcome post could
> be worth it or not so much?
> I think Esmi has a good point, but at the same time, if there's a slight
> chance it might make an impact, I believe it might be worth it.
> You the bosses, of course, ;-)
>
> Marv
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Mika A Epstein<ipstenu at ipstenu.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Basically, I don't think the -free- forums is a good place for supporting
>> pay-for plugins and themes.
>>
>> There's responsibility on us to be good WP stewards, and a huge part of
>> that is encouraging community growth. We can't have growth without
>> respecting the devs who provide support for their products behind a
>> paywall. Think what you like about WPMUDev or Genesis - Their stuff is
>> behind a paywall. We owe it to them to send people back there.
>>
>> If they want to offer some free support themselves, that's on them.
>>
>> Remember: There is -no- requirement to provide free support :)
>>
>> Francisco de 
>> Azevedo<mailto:frandeazevedo at gmail.**com<frandeazevedo at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> October 4, 2012 1:38 PM
>>>
>>> Hi Ipstenu!
>>>
>>> I think I agree with your input, but I'm having a hard time 
>>> understanding
>>> whether you are exposing general views on the matter or defending a
>>> particular stand-point. Either one is perfectly fine, of course, and I'm
>>> only asking to understand your point better.
>>> 1) I agree with this 100%. But who do you think should be the one(s)
>>> providing that support? IMO, it should be the devs, not mods and
>>> contributors.
>>> 2) I didn't quite get what you meant here. But coupled with your next
>>> remark, in that case, if we don't help out users with premium software,
>>> aren't we in a way contributing to premium devs' livelihood? More
>>> specifically, if premium users get free support from the forums, 
>>> they will
>>> be more reluctant to pay for premium help, and that can also 
>>> constitute a
>>> nice sales pitch to premium devs.
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>>
>>>
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>>> Mika A Epstein<mailto:ipstenu at ipstenu.org>
>>> October 4, 2012 1:09 PM
>>>
>>> My issue with that is two-fold.
>>>
>>> 1) You paid for it. You should get support.
>>>
>>> 2) If it's a pay-for-support deal, we're making it harder for people to
>>> earn a living in WP.
>>>
>>> The second reason is really why I do it. I love ThemeHybrid, and the 
>>> code
>>> is free, but Justin asks you to pay for support. It's not a huge amount,
>>> and if this is really your 'life!' (tm the guy I argued with last week),
>>> then FFS, pay the $25 and grow up. Justin deserves to be able to make a
>>> living.
>>>
>>> Also in the cases where premium themes eff off and refuse to help, well,
>>> that's good too. Why? They get people running away in droves.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mar Ventus<mailto:marventus.wp at gmail.com**>
>>> October 4, 2012 1:00 PM
>>> Hi, guys!
>>> Since you opened the "what should be added to the Forum Welcome" debate
>>> (and yeah, it is too late to back down now, heehee), what do you think
>>> about reinforcing the "no support for premium themes" rule? Lately, I've
>>> been noticing a lot of users with premium templates and plugins 
>>> trying to
>>> get support on the forums. I suspect that some of them are even fully
>>> aware
>>> of the rule, but still post nonetheless without sharing a link to their
>>> site (i.e., so that you can't tell what their themes are).
>>> More concretely put, what I was thinking was expanding the "Include as
>>> much
>>> information as possible" paragraph and explicitly ask users to post 
>>> a link
>>> to their sites (whenever possible). IMHO, said changes should help users
>>> better abide by the "What not to do" section.
>>> Cheers!
>>>
>>> Marventus
>>>
>>>
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>>> Jan Dembowski<mailto:jan at dembowski.net>
>>> October 4, 2012 5:09 AM
>>>
>>> +1 for adding a couple of sentences.
>>>
>>> Some of the questions are acceptable such as how do I remove "Leave a
>>> Reply" or modify the margin or padding and I think those aren't bad at
>>> all.
>>> I don't think those necessarily should get "See a CSS forum" right 
>>> off the
>>> bat.
>>>
>>> But a couple of sentences in the Forum Welcome page along the lines "CSS
>>> customization is outside of the scope of these WordPress software 
>>> support
>>> forums, for more generic formatting support see a CSS forum" wouldn't
>>> hurt.
>>> If a topic started getting deep into CSS customization (again) then that
>>> could get pointed to as a reference.
>>>
>>> Jan Dembowski
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>>> Michael Stolze<mailto:alchymyth at gmail.com>
>>> October 4, 2012 4:30 AM
>>> there is a substantial amount of topics which are primarily about
>>> formatting (or other rudimentary skills) which often get the usual 
>>> 'please
>>> use firebug..and ask at a css forum' answers.
>>>
>>> I suggest to add a sentence or two to the forum rules (not that anybody
>>> ever reads them before posting) to set in more details what questions
>>> should (or should not) be asked in this forum (similar to what they have
>>> at
>>> the WPSE 
>>> http://wordpress.**stackexchange.com/faq<http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/faq>)
>>>
>>> I am looking forward to hearing your opinions about this,
>>> cheers,
>>> Michael
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>>>
>>
>> --
>> Mika A Epstein (aka Ipstenu)
>> http://ipstenu.org | http://halfelf.org
>>
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>
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