Introducing our WordPress Support Columnists!

The team here at WP Realm is always growing, and today I’m really happy to introduce our three latest members: Scott Basgaard, Andrea Rennick, and Mason James. Many of you will know Mason, Andrea, and Scott from the WordPress community, from Twitter, or from WordCamps.

Mason is head of support at WPMU DEV where he leads a support team of 7 people, as well as running his own WordPress support, management and consultancy business, WP Valet. As a Support Ninja at WooThemes, Scott works on one of the busiest commercial WordPress support forums around. He also organised the first WordCamp in Norway and worked as a developer for a number of years at WebDevStudios. Andrea is no doubt familiar to you through her ongoing work at WPMU Tutorials, from her work on the WordPress support forums, the awesome WP ebooks, and also at StudioPress where she is Documentation and Support Forum Manager.

There’s something that all these guys have in common – and if you haven’t figured it out then you’re working a little slow today. All three of them support WordPress. Supporters are the unsung heros of the WordPress community – from the multitude of volunteers at the WordPress support forums, to individuals supporting their plugins and themes, to commercial WordPress theme and plugin shops where a support team helps out thousands of people. Once a WordPress product starts to gain traction, development and design shops hire a dedicated support staff – it’s a whole new career, and Mason, Andrea, and Scott are right at the centre of it.

Support teams are the cornerstone to maintaining a successful WordPress business; they interact with WordPress users in more varied ways than most of us. Doing it badly means you’re letting your users and your customers down. That’s why we asked Scott, Andrea, and Mason if they’d like to contribute to WP Realm with their very own column. Each week one of them will post their tales from the trenches, the experiences they’ve forged on the very frontline of WordPress. No doubt they know things that we can all learn from, whether it’s how to fix a technical issue, to how to deal with a grumpy user, to WordPress features that are making their community happy. Check out their column every Wednesday!

So welcome Scott, Andrea, and Mason – we’re pleased to have you on board with the WP Realm team!

Got a unique perspective on something WordPress? Think you could maintain an ongoing column? Email the editor to see how you can get involved.