Have You Visited the Forums Lately?
If you haven’t checked out the WordPress.com forums lately, you should! The forums offer an active community of fellow WordPress.com users, and they’re a great place to get help with support issues and share tips and tricks about how you’re using WordPress.com.
Are you seeing errors in your browser, do you want to transfer upgrades or a blog, or are you trying to use Google’s Webmaster Tools? A quick search of the forums will turn up answers to all of these questions.
Our forums are monitored by active volunteers with a wealth of WordPress.com experience, and by WordPress.com Happiness Engineers.
Need help with CSS tweaks to your theme? We have a forum dedicated to CSS Customization with WordPress.com staff and volunteers who are especially well-versed in CSS. Get advice on how to customize your navigation menu, or realign your widget text.
If you’ve purchased a theme and need help setting it up, there’s a special forum for each premium theme where the theme authors answer questions.
If English is not your primary language, we probably have a support forum in your preferred language where you can get help and advice from those who speak your native tongue.
If you haven’t explored the forums yet, we’d love to hear from you there! Please stop by and join in the discussion: tell us how you chose your theme, or how you prefer to share your posts with your social media networks.
We’ll see you there!
Very new to this… How do I find the forums? I’m currently using my smartphone.
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Reblogged this on Automattically Kraft and commented:
Part of the work from last week’s Vancouver meetup!
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ZakcHead:
Forums link here: https://wordpress.com/forums/
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I very rarely enter the forums.
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Me too
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Every time I have used the forums for answers I remain unanswered.
Here’s my latest. https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/why-is-a-picture-of-me-posting-to-my-facebook-page?replies=2#post-1510777
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Hi Dawn – If you ever don’t get a reply, try searching for related threads on the same topic. For example, on that topic here’s one explanation from staff, and here is a longer discussion between other users. If you find an existing thread on the topic, you can add your report to where users are already discussing it.
If all else fails, try reposting. Maybe you will catch the eye of a different community member who knows the answer.
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Thank you. I did do a search before but didn’t find these threads. I certainly hope they help me from having my profile picture posting to my facebook business page every day. Its quite embarrassing.
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Really useful – thank you
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I think the forums are completely un-helpful, especially for brand new bloggers.
Most requests for assistance are met with snarky replies, verging on downright insults
I’ve been blogging for 2 years and when I have questions re: how to do something on WordPress, I take it to Google orlook it up in my WordPress for Dummies book.
My most recent forum experience began a week ago when the reader changed. I couldn’t find much about it on Google so decided to check the Forums. Sure enough, one enormous thread exists in which a slew of negative reactions are being largely ignored by staff.
Bottom line: if you like snark and/or being ignored, then by all means check out the forums. You won’t be disappointed!
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Thanks for the feedback. We’re working on ways to improve the experience for new bloggers. With the thread on the Reader, while we don’t respond to each comment, we do read each one. There have already been some improvements made to the new Reader based on the feedback from that thread.
We very much want the forums to be a helpful and welcoming community and the more users we can get involved in the forums, the better they’ll be.
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Thank you Josh
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Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for letting us know about the forums. I will check the forums out. I enjoy using WordPress so the forums should be ideal!
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I certainly have been to the forums lately, and some of the things I (and others) mentioned about the changes to the Reader were adopted.
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Thank you!!!
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@SmallHouseBigGarden as an active forum volunteer, I’m also sorry to hear that your experience has been negative. Looking at your recent forum history, I can see only one question where tt pointed you to the main discussion thread on the Reader (no snark there) and a couple of threads where Staff replied to you. Hope your future forum experiences will feel more positive.
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Well. This post is worth exploring! Thanks!
I know the discomfort some may feel when completely new to blogging or to anything “web” and helpers throw terms around as if the newcomer should have already memorized all the new definitions to old words. (When I first entered the wonderful world of blogging, I thought a theme was a purpose for writing an essay or a fictional work, or else the part that repeats in a musical piece. Imagine my confusion, if you can! (I’m on the right page, showing a multitude of different “designs” and still looking for the themes?)
I think the need is for very patient people who can understand this and can explain in terms that have not changed meaning, such as I encountered when I installed my own, very first desktop, and had to call their support. The wonderful technician there talked to me about the big box and the little button from the outset, and I could tell he knew every iota of the entire computer, and even that he was speaking to me in my language, which was a second language for him, and from a country that culturally does not even encourage men speaking to women. I was very pleasantly amazed, and totally a loyal customer from then, on.
Anyway, probably a first tier of support for folks who might even wonder “what’s a theme” and who don’t feel insulted if the asker knows nothing about getting WordPress support from other entities, would be a good idea. The first time I was counseled to turn to google for the answer to my new-comer’s question, I felt amazed at the bad customer feeling I had. Later I learned, WordPress is growing so fast, it is hard to keep up with us. Right? That is right, isn’t it? I mean, I was always taught the only dumb question is the unasked one. Right? 😉
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One of the things that many people overlook is using the forum and/or the Support search feature and forum tags to find recent discussions on their problem. The odds are above average that someone has asked and answered your question already, so searching before posting really helps out us volunteers too.
If you don’t get an answer within a day of posting in the forums, your question may have been inadvertently overlooked. but don’t give up. Remind us you’re still waiting for an answer by posting back to your original thread.
Also, the forums are karma in action. If you’ve received help there, and feel you know the answer to another community member’s question, double-check your support facts and join the discussion!
Thanks for the opportunity to chime in!
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Great tips!
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Reblogged this on a fiend of awesome and commented:
Drop by my ‘office’ any time! 🙂
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I have visited the forums a few times. I also look through posts once and awhile, to see If I can help someone, but the active members are fast in responding. 🙂 Don’t be afraid to voice your opinions about themes or features. Who knows, WP developers might appreciate your honesty and fix or change things you find.
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Thank you.
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No, but I would love to
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The lexicon which staff has published is extremely useful. It’s a dictionary especially for words used in perhaps unfamiliar ways online, specifically for WordPress.com. Here is the link:
https://wordpress.com/support/lexicon/
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I visited the forums over the weekend as one of my blog pages wasn’t being viewed properly. One of your fabulous team members – Kraft? – fixed it for me! I go there whenever anything on my blog is out of place. Help is always there.
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Happy to have helped!
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Hi Elizabeth, I have been visiting the forums a lot over the last 10 days after posting my initial query and started a different thread today. I have read quite a lot about my two queries but have seen no resolution to them before the topic was closed. Nor have I had a response to my 10 day old query. I have picked up a lot of useful tips but didn’t find what I was looking for. I am a bit frustrated as I am not very techy and don’t know where to turn.
https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/why-arent-my-posts-showing-up-when-i-explore-tags?replies=1#return
https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/instant-post-emails-from-those-im-following-not-received?replies=1#return
I’d appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. Many thanks. Carol
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We’ve replied to both your threads 🙂
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Thank you so much. I am a happy camper now!
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I don’t think that many new bloggers know they have a forum profile and can click the member link under their username to locate every thread they have posted into in the forums. Example: https://wordpress.com/forums/profile/smallhousebiggarden Bottom line: If you have lost track of your threads and what was said in them then click the member link under your username and find them all.
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i just started using wordpress 3 days ago. how can i find the forums?
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You can find the forums at https://wordpress.com/forums 🙂
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It’s a great opportunity to say how much i appreciate this wonderful forums platform, and even more appreciate the wonderful Automattic team and the volunteers who helps you with every question or a problem in a quick, professional and kind reply. Thank you very much for that !!
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Thank you for your kind words. Happy to help!
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Thank you. I help on the forum French as best I can, this irregularly. Especially in the morning. Yesterday I answered in the evening on two questions.
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Thank you so much. We really appreciate polyglots helping us out in the foreign language forums. Merci!
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Thanks for the info about the WordPress forums. I’ve never heard of them before.
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Hope to be a Happiness Engineer someday! 🙂
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We’re always looking for more Happiness Engineers! You can read more about it over here.
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This will be so helpful in the future. Thanks
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I tried but there were no answers to my questions. Jerry
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I see that one of our forum volunteers already replied to your thread 🙂
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Thanks for the suggestion. Will try it out and feed back to you.
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Sounds very interesting. I am a new blogger and the interaction would definitely be of great help :-)…
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Lots of great people aboard too ,…thank you 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Where is a display or list of the free diferent themes?
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Here are all the free themes in the Theme Showcase: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/sort/free/
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A very big thank you to all the volunteers on the forum. In the past, when I was a new blogger (I have now been blogging 4 years) I needed help on a number of occasions and every time I received prompt and helpful advice. It is a great part of WP.
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I have been blogging for several months now and am beginning to have enough knowledge to understand a thing or two. Some of my forum experiences were unhelpful because the person answering seemed to ignore the, “I’m new at this,” part and ran off a jargon filled reply I couldn’t follow. Since then things have improved a bit and I can usually find what I need by searching around a bit. timethief has been particularly helpful, much appreciated.
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thanks for the reminder … never thought about it
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Woah!! to think I’ve been blogging near to six months now and never know a forum existed. Well, all cool though. Good to meet you writers too..
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