Marius L. J. 11:34 pm on November 26, 2017  

Agenda for November 30th Support Meeting

  • WordPress 4.9 – How are things working out
  • Health Check updates
  • Need a meeting deputy for December 7th
  • Checking in with international liaisons
  • Time permitting: Open floor

For any other items, please leave them in a comment, or bring them up during the meeting!

The meeting will be Thursday, November 30, 2017, 17:00 UTC in #forums on Slack. (a Slack account is required)

Marius L. J. 10:04 pm on November 26, 2017  

Troubleshooting using the Health Checker

When providing support, the most used (and most reliable) way to determine the root of an issue is by disabling plugins. We often have the problem that users do not wish to do this, or claim they have without any apparent effect.

Those claiming to have tested things, we can’t really do anything about, but those who do not wish to disable plugins often have a legitimate claim: They do not wish to cripple their website for visitors.

After working on a solution to test what plugins may be affecting loopbacks in WordPress, the procedure was expanded, and a new feature was introduced:

Troubleshooting mode

This is introduced as a new tab in the Health Check screen, it has a fair amount of text informing users that all plugins will appear disabled to them, but they are in reality enabled for all site visitors still. To ensure the user understands that they are without plugins until they log out, they are required to check a box stating that they understand it, this is really just to try and avoid support requests in the nature of “I lost all my plugins”.

Troubleshooting mode disabled all plugins both on the front and back end of your site, this makes it ideal for testing things that affect places like the customizer, the post editor and so on, places where a plugin could easily cause some problems.

When the user sees that everything works as it should without plugins enabled, it is much easier to walk through and discover what plugin actually causes problems for them.

Two thing to take note of:

  • It intentionally disabled all plugins, including the health checker plugin (we admit that we are not without fault and perhaps some odd situation arises where it causes an issue)
  • Must Use (MU) plugins can not be disabled, to do so we would have to move them around, this would both impact site visitors, and may cause larger issue as they may contain data for controlling caches etc with hosts.

Once troubleshooting is completed, logging out and back in again will restore your dashboard to what it used to be, full of all your favorite plugins!

Loopback tests

For the sake of disclosure, the loopback tests have also been improved, these are used for WP_Cron to work as intended, and more recently also to allow the theme and plugin editors to check edits before saving them to avoid accidentally causing a White Screen Of Death (WSOD) on your site.

We initially just showed if these requests failed, but that isn’t very helpful, so now if it fails a button allows the user to test the loopback again, this time with all plugins disabled.

Of course, this is helpful, but not very finger-pointing-accurate, so it goes a step further, if the loopback is successful without any plugins active it will allow you to do a final test, where each individual active plugin is tested to see if it causes the loopback to fail, allowing us to pinpoint where there may be a problem.

Of course, there are exceptions, things may still fail even without plugins active, but at that point we can more accurately work on what steps to address next.

Marius L. J. 5:45 pm on November 23, 2017
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November 23rd Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

Our next support workshop has been announced!

Scaling Support: Dip the Data Bucket Every Day – Workshop on January 22, 2018

 

WordPress 4.9

4.9.1 is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday November 28th, with RC1 landing on Monday the 27th. These are tentative dates, and things may change. The 4.9.1 release will focus on the 3 major issues discovered so far affecting users:

  • Broken features due to MediaElements.js trying to validate WordPress locales
  • Editing themes/plugins when using IIS
  • Caching of theme files

There will likely be a 4.9.2 to resolve other issues that may arise and are not as pressing.

 

Checking with international liaisons

The Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Italian and German liaisons stopped by to let us know things are going well. The Swedes have had an influx of both questions seekers as well as providers of late. In Italy they had WordCamp Milano, and in Germany we saw WordCamp Cologne with new contributors from their contributor day!

 

Attendance

@anevins, @bcworkz, @bdbrown, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @fierevere, @firoz2456, @jdembowski, @josearcos, @keesiemeijer, @numeeja, @otto42, @pmfonseca, @sergeybiryukov, @t-p, @tobifjellner, @williampatton, @zodiac1978 and @zoonini attended.

 

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

 

Contributor tips
Each plugin and theme have their own support forum, if you are very familiar with something specific, why not give those specific forums a read, you just might find someone you can help!

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 5:23 pm on November 22, 2017  

Agenda for November 23rd Support Meeting

  • WordPress 4.9 – How are things working out
  • Checking in with international liaisons
  • Time permitting: Open floor

For any other items, please leave them in a comment, or bring them up during the meeting!

The meeting will be Thursday, November 23, 2017, 17:00 UTC in #forums on Slack. (a Slack account is required)

Kathryn 5:09 pm on November 21, 2017
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Scaling Support: Dip the Data Bucket Every Day – Workshop on January 22, 2018

We’re pleased to announce the third workshop in a series aimed at sharing best practices in support. The workshops are geared to boosting support skills among all those who support core, plugins, themes, or anything else in the WordPress ecosphere. (Check out the two previous workshops here.) The support team welcomes your ideas for other workshop topics or speakers; feel free to comment here, or give us a ping in Slack.

The workshop

Scaling Support: Dip the Data Bucket Every Day

The best way to provide high-quality support is to have enough well trained and skilled technicians to provide that support. That’s only possible if you know how heavy your support load is and how rapidly its increasing — if at all. The presentation will walk you through my personal strategy of understanding my support team’s support load and how data influences our week-to-week decisions for hiring new support.

Host

Matt Cromwell is Head of Support and Community Outreach at GiveWP.com and WordImpress.com. He is the author of several popular free plugins, and the Lead Organizer of the Advanced WordPress San Diego Meetup and AWP Facebook group, which boasts over 29K members. He’s a popular blogger at his personal site mattcromwell.com, wordimpress.com, givewp.com, and mediatemple.net.

When is it?

Monday, January 22, 2018, 18:00 UTC, it will last for about an hour and includes Q&A.

A link to the Zoom teleconference will be provided in the #forums Slack channel about 10 minutes before the session begins.

How do I join?

The session will be run via videoconference. Please download the free Zoom app ahead of time. You can run Zoom on most desktop and mobile devices. Can’t make it? The session will be recorded and the video posted later – keep your eye on this P2.

Marius L. J. 1:52 am on November 17, 2017
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November 16th Support Team Meeting Summary

WordPress 4.9

WordPress 4.9 is out, and as is customary a new Master List has been put up on the forums.

As new bugs, gotcha’s and plugin/theme conflicts are discovered we’ll be updating the thread, so keep an eye on it for any new items.

Remember to keep general chatter in #forums on Slack to a minimum for the first 48 hours after a release, this is done to avoid missing information when it’s being shared at a critical point right after a new release.

Checking in with international liaisons

The Russian, Hindi, Italian, German and Spanish communities are having a good time.

Other topics

The next workshop is scheduled for January, more details to follow, but December is a very busy time for a lot of people so it makes sense for this to right over the new years hump.

Attendance

@anevins, @bcworkz, @bdbrown, @bethannon1, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @fierevere, @firoz2456, @geoffreyshilling, @hardeepasrani, @ipstenu, @jcastaneda, @josearcos, @lasacco, @macmanx, @numeeja, @pmfonseca, @stephencottontail, @sterndata, @t-p, @wido, @zodiac1978 and @zoonini attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

 

Contributor tips
Bring that knowledge of yours to a local meetup, it’s a great way to share and learn among like-minded individuals!

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 11:46 pm on November 15, 2017  

Agenda for November 16th Support Meeting

  • WordPress 4.9 – How’s it going (if the release goes as planned)
  • Checking in with international liaisons
  • Time permitting: Open floor

Any other items that need addressing, please bring them up at the end of the meeting, or leave a comment below!

Take note of the meeting time, 17:00 UTC (as per the last two weeks votes, this is the most convenient time for the majority of us).

The meeting will be Thursday, November 16, 2017, 17:00 UTC in #forums on Slack. (a Slack account is required)

James Huff 6:30 pm on November 9, 2017
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November 9th Support Team Meeting Summary

Announcements

Meeting Time!

The timing of this week’s meeting was a bit odd. No meeting was started at 16:00 UTC, though traditionally the meeting always followed the Daylight Saving Time switch in the US until the final vote, so we waited until 17:00 UTC and just started the meeting ourselves. This of course means that the votes were only received from folks who stayed the extra hour or who at least made their vote known in some other way prior to when we kicked things off, more on that later.

The time choices involved moving the meeting to 17:00 UTC (which will be an hour later for about half of us) or keeping it at 16:00 UTC (which will be an hour earlier for the other half).

The “final” votes for the meeting time are as follows:

  • Move to 17:00 UTC = 11
  • Keep at 16:00 UTC = 6

If you did not attend the meeting, but regularly attend and would like to have voted, please leave a comment with your vote. If we reach enough votes here to shift 16:00 UTC into the lead, we will call another vote during next week’s meeting at Thursday, November 16, 2017, 17:00 UTC, otherwise the time will stand at 17:00 UTC until the next cursed time change.

WordCamp US 2017

WordCamp US 2017 is fast approaching, so we just had a brief discussion about what’s being planned so far. It’s still a bit too soon to have solid plans, but so far we think it would be really cool to test out the Slack-based volunteer orientation we discussed at this year’s Community Summit. So far, the plan is to start it 30 minutes after Contributor Day starts and to announce it as many ways as possible far in advance so new volunteers at home can participate.

Checkin with International Support Liaisons

Attendance

@macmanx @firoz2456 @cristianozanca @kidsguide @bdbrown @jdembowski @liamdempsey @fierevere @keesiemeijer @zoonini @sterndata @sergeybiryukov @howdy_mcgee @geoffreyshilling @tobifjellner @bcworkz @wido @bethannon1 @danhgilmore @numeeja @anevins @hardeepasrani attended

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

Contributor tips
Did you know we have a few handy tools we consider must-haves for efficiently traversing the WordPress support world?

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 10:19 am on November 8, 2017  

Agenda for November 9th Support Meeting

For any other items to discuss please add them in the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Remember that DST changes are in effect for everyone now, and we’ve kept the time at 16.00 UTC for now.

The meeting will be Thursday, November 9, 2017, 16:00 UTC in #forums on Slack. (a Slack account is required)

Marius L. J. 10:18 am on November 8, 2017
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November 2nd Support Team Meeting Summary

General announcements

The WordPress 2017 survey is up, help us understand how WordPress is used so we can better align its direction by filling it out, it only takes a few minutes.

Time zones and daylight savings are again showing their faces, a quick tally shows that the current time of 16.00 UTC is still a favorable time for the majority of us, but we’ll do another check at the next gathering when the whole world has finished with these shenanigans.

WordPress 4.9

We’re getting very close to the 4.9 release date, and as such the draft for the master list has gone up as is customary, if there are core changes or gotchas we should prepare for, please provide them as comments on that post.

WordPress 4.9 Master List Draft

As mentioned, release date is growing ever closer, so if possible please help test. Release Candidate (RC) means it should be feature complete and all known bugs are taken care of, so it should be safe to test in any way you can think of at this point.

Checking in with international liaisons

The Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian communities stopped by for this weeks meeting. We love to hear feedback from the non-English parts of the community, so if you know someone who’s from a locale we don’t often hear from, feel free to invite them over, there’s value in sharing after all!

 

Attendance

@abletec, @anevins, @bcworkz, @bdbrown, @clorith, @cristianozanca, @fierevere, @firoz2456, @geoffreyshilling, @hardeepasrani, @howdy_mcgee, @jamiekennedy, @jdembowski, @josearcos, @keesiemeijer, @liamdempsey, @macmanx, @matheusfd, @pmfonseca, @sterndata, @t-p, @tobifjellner and @zodiac1978 attended.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

 

Contributor tips
Some issues are mroe common than others, and you can save time by using one of our curated pre-defined replies.

#weekly-chat