204 - Author Support V Community Support

Debate with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

Setting up the Debate

This debate was partly prompted by a WP Tavern article regarding what can be done about the WordPress.org forum being used to support premium versions of plugins which are not in the repository.

There seems to be a lot of complexity to this due to the varying expectations of support and the vast difference in what plugin and themes do.

We are probably better for having both types of support, but perhaps polarizing these can help explore the topic.

WordPress’ Support Team contributors are discussing how they can curb support requests for commercial products on the official WordPress.org forums. Users sometimes seek help for commercial product upgrades on the forums of the free version, not knowing that the moderators’ official policy is to refer them to the extension’s commercial support channel. In other instances, it is not immediately clear whether the issue is with the free version or a paid upgrade that the user has installed.

Author Support

• Can avoid dodgy advice from the community who may like to talk but may not have the knowledge.
• Community support is a good promotion arena for affiliate sales folk who tend to push another paid plugin rather than a useful bit of code.
• With GPL premium, authors really only have support (along with easy access to updates to sell). How will WordPress continue to grow if no one can create a business from it?
• For business essential plugins and themes, author support seem essential. Probably a mistake for an author to cut corners here to reduce prices. Probably a mistake in some cases for some of us who would like lifetime deals without support but with only updates!

Community Support

• Community support goes beyond what authors can do. So much of support is based on extending a plugin beyond what it is designed to do. Most of it is other plugins that they work well with (the community and could have more experience there).
• Support is not just about achieving tasks. Moral support, friendship etc.
• Plugin authors tend not to be regular users. They stop serving clients and building sites and could be the worst people for advice about that!
• Fielding simple support queries takes the pressure of authors, allowing them to do more with updates etc. (ideally fixing snags, accessibility issue and improving stability - the things that don’t get requested).
• In terms of the WordPress.org repository there is not clear distinction between free and pro as often the pro is an addon. Also moderators don’t support those (we think?)

Additional topics within the debate

Support expectations:

• Some people expect responses in minutes (but find $60 a year for unlimited sites too much).
• Some expect all compatibility with other plugins to be resolved.

Blurred lines over support

• It is not just the repository. Partnership can be an issue. GoDaddy has one with WooCommerce. We already have the Beaver Builder community issue with people who got it via their GoDaddy installation. The customer sees it is as one blaming the other, which it is not.