WordPress Help Is Easy When You Follow These Steps
If you’re frustrated by WordPress you need more than just a Web Host that JUST says they know WordPress.
Our WordPress Support Experts take care of the installation, configuration, support, maintenance, security and fixes – any WordPress small job for you.
The Best Way To Get the WordPress Support You Want
We’ve been blogging for 14 year now! With that much experience you can imagine how many broken and malfunctioning Blogs we’ve seen. Along with those fixes comes the interaction with the customers who have suffered through those frustrations so we’ve also got a pretty good idea what’s needed to make fixing and making changes to your WordPress site fast and painless.
Tips To Get EXACTLY What You Want Done To Your WordPress Site Done – The Right Way The First Time!
Avoid Sending A Big Email With 15 Things Need Changing!
In as much as it’s easy to just fling a list of WordPress todo-items into an email and then blast it a support email address, this approach makes for a awful support experience. Both the WordPress expert helping you and your ability to keep track of what was done and if it was done to your satisfaction. So first things first…
Do you know what you want or need done?
Make A list of Tasks in Order of Importance and Submit ONLY the First Task in the Sequence
This approach ensures that no tasks are missed AND that the critical items are done in priority. As well you’ll know if and WHEN that tasks are completed the way you wanted them done.
The Devil is In The Details
WordPress Support experts are experts at WordPress NOT trying to guess what page and what site you want fixed or changed! You’ve got to be super specific as to the exact URL and/or site that you are asking for help on. Every request has a field available for a SUBJECT and BODY. Be as specific as you can about what you want done and where your want it done.
The support experts are only going to start working on your fix when they know exactly what they should be doing. Them now knowing means additional tickets/emails back and forth between you and them and delays in getting the job done.
How Is It Broken – How Do You Want it To Work
OK you’ve got something that you want fixed what’s the best way to describe the problem and what you want to have happen when it’s fixed? Consider these 4 questions when filling in the body of the Support request. When something isn’t working we need to know
- What’s Broken? – Explain what you think is broken on/in the site in as much detail as possible.
- How Are You Trying To Do It Now? – Explain the sequence of steps or process that you are following.
- What Happens When You Do That? – When you follow those steps what happens
- What Were You Expecting to Happen? – Describe the outcome that you want to have happen or were expecting to happen
Let Us In – At Least Once!
When it comes to actually fixing your site there are a couple of givens… That aren’t always given!
When you first sign up we’ll need a couple of “WordPress Admin” details. Things like:
- WordPress Admin URL, Username and Password
- Your Hosting URL with cPanel, FTP and phpAdmin Usernames and Passwords
- The URL of the Site
You only have to provide these details once though… On our first login we’ll install our WPBlogSupport Plugin! This is our maintenance and support plugin so keep it active. Not only does it give us quick access to the your site it keeps your WordPress Blog secure, and always up to date.
What is Being Worked On
Many of the changes that get requested are browser or OS specific, what shows up correctly in Internet Explorer and Chrome May look different in Firefox. So make sure to include what OS you’re viewing any issues on and which browser it either works or doesn’t work on.
And while every little tiny bit of information helps…. A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS. When appropriate use free tools or services to show both exactly what you want and Don’t want.
You can always attach images to replies in the support requests, however using some of these free tools gives you more flexibility. You only have to add links to the images and videos!
Here’s some simple tools we like:
- For short screen capture videos and screen images, Jing is a free service from the company that created the “Camtasia” screen capture suite of tools. The only downside to Jing is that the videos have to be under 5 minutes long… which is perfect for explaining or showing what you need fixed. Of course if you have something more complex the Camtasia or Screenflow software for MAC will do the trick.
- Another great screen capture tool is called Screenpresso. Available on both PC and Mac there is a free version that is highly integrated into social media, storage and note taking tools like onenote and evernote
- The other free too is for creating albums of stored images from a series of screen captures. It’s called imgur.com . I like it because its web based and easy to use.
We Check Our Work – Please Make Sure Your Looking At What We Fixed
We’ve all done it… made changes to some online document, page site and then can’t find the change… only to realize later that you forgot to “clear your cache” and start fresh! If you don’t quite know what I’m talking about just hit the Control and F5 key on your windows machine or Command + R (Mac).
Ticket Creep
Most support systems have away of prioritizing the requests they receive. Ours is no different, you can set the level of urgency of your request when you make it. If you get anxious with the status of your fixes though…. you might be causing “ticket Creep”.
Support Requests and TIME Stamped – This means that every time you “check in” and update the ticket your actually pushing the ticket further down into the list of active tickets. The more times you check in… the more time it takes to get worked on! We try to get to any ticket within the first hour or two and have everything fixed in 4.6 hours unless we need more information from you of course so make sure that if you really need to checkin and respond to an existing request it’s only with information that will make the fix go faster!
