WP Realm

WordPress news, community news, reviews and more from all over the world

Writing a Better Support Forum Request

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Greeting from the not so cold or snowy Great White North. It is I, your intrepid reporter coming to you live from the support forum trenches. I’m Andrea Rennick, co-author of WordPress All-In-One for Dummies, and part of the excellent support team at StudioPress.

When I was first asked to contribute, one of the very first things that came to mind was covering the myriad of ways in which your users can provide information that we, the support team, can use to help them get the best help available. Send your users here and I’ll set them right.

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WordPress Community Summit Announced: WP Realm Represents!

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If you have been following the WordPress News then you’ll have heard about the WordPress Community Summit. The Summit is for WordPress community members, contributors, business people and general WordPress people. The make.wordpress.org/summit/ blog has gone up with a list of invited people. The list makes for some interesting reading, and there’s some surprises in there who, if they attend, will no doubt bring a bit of “excitement” to the proceedings.

Here at the Realm we’re really chuffed, that not one, not even two or three or four, but five of our number have been invited! These are:

  • Remkus de Fries aka Friesibeast – our founder and the man responsible for WordCamp Netherlands and the Dutch translation of WordPress
  • Noel Tock – WordCamp Zurich organizer & happytables founder, thinks themes are dead
  • Zé Fontainhas – WordPress Polyglots lead, grumpiest man in the world
  • Andrea Rennick – Support/Docs Team Rep, WordPress mother and quilter
  • Me – Siobhan McKeown – writer of Smashing Mag articles, doc writer and general overexcitable & impatient person

It’s going to be a great chance for us all to meet up, and to get to know the rest of the community. We’re all really excited to be representing our respective countries, to meet with folks stateside and to show them just how vibrant the international WordPress community is.

What do you think of the list? Anyone you think shouldn’t have been on there? Anyone you think is missing?

BuddyPress 1.6 is now available

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The latest version of BuddyPress is now available and called Lucali.  This is a major release of BuddyPress and see a great many tickets and new features.  You can read the full release notes here.  Some highlights include: Activity Management, Akistmet Integration, Database Query Reduction, Improved SEO, Faster and More Efficient, Toolbar merging, Profile Privacy.. and lots of other goodies.  So, what are you waiting for go and enjoy the goodness that is BuddyPress 1.6! ∞

When Does Support Turn into Customization?

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It starts so simply:

@BFF says: I <3 your WordPress product so much! It’s saved my career and brought meaning to my life. But I wish the text in this widget was red – not black.  Help!

“Oh, I’m happy to help”, you think. Providing prompt, effective support is a big deal and here’s the perfect opportunity to make someone happy. They seem like a great customer already and happy customer are great for business.

It’s only 3 lines of code anyway, so what’s the harm? [Read more…] about When Does Support Turn into Customization?

It’s Time to Stop Kicking the BuddyPress Puppy

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If I had a £ for every time someone complained at BuddyPress or moaned about this or that shortcoming, I’d probably be quite rich and typing this from a desert island. To me, it sometimes feels as if BuddyPress were a poor puppy, tossed out into the world and kicked as an easy target. In the words of Chris Crocker: “Leave BuddyPress alone!”.

In an attempt to redress this imbalance, I am going to roll out a few of the old chestnuts levied at BuddyPress and try to prevent the puppy kicking with some counter points. I will state from the outset that this is not meant as a deep analysis, but rather just my responses to the nay sayers. I might be a member of the BuddyPress-pompom-cheerleading-fan-club-squad and don’t hide it, but keep in mind that BuddyPress pays most of my bills so it kind of deserves my defence, to some degree. That said, I am certainly not blind to where it needs a little nudge to get better.

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Why Aren’t WordPress Users Upgrading?

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First, I’d like to say thank you to the team here at WP Realm for allowing me to join and contribute to what has become a very valuable source of WordPress community related news. My name is Scott Basgaard, a WordPress “fanboy” and Support Ninja at WooThemes, and I’m teaming up with Mason James and Andrea Rennick to deliver a weekly column here at WP Realm from the trenches of the support world. We hope to bring you an interesting article and/or story from our experiences helping out others in our daily support routines. With that said, let’s talk about upgrading and staying up to date with WordPress as it’s something I constantly run into.

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WP Engine Integrates Git Version Control with WordPress

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If you’ve not heard of WP Engine you’ve probably been living under a stone (or not attended a WordCamp in America, which the WP Engine guys invariably attend). The WordPress hosting company has launched a new feature which is going to be of particular interest to developers, especially those who prefer Git to Subversion.

Git-push-to-deploy by WP Engine lets developers deploy applications using Git, and now that it’s incorporated with WP Engine it means anyone who’s hosted there can a) push to WordPress, and b) use version control with WordPress. With Git Push-to-Deply it looks like WP Engine is looking to tap into the developer market by offering the tools that developers love, and that make their lives easier.