Dec 4, 2013 / Beginner

SOS: Getting Help with WordPress.com

Happiness EngineersWordPress.com has fantastic customer support. Of course, I’m just a tad biased, since I’m a member of WordPress.com’s support staff. We are “Happiness Engineers” because we want to make you happy!

Support is readily available, but we’ve found that sometimes when our users have a question or a problem, they’re not sure how to contact us. If you have any paid upgrade, the easiest way to get in touch with us is to use the contact support form. You’ll be given an option of whether to get support publicly or privately. If you choose publicly, your question will still be answered by a staff member, but it will be visible to anyone in the forums, so that lots of people can benefit from the response. If you choose private, only you and support staff will be able to see your question.

If you don’t have a paid upgrade, never fear! You can still post your question in our community forums. Posting in the forums is an excellent way to get help. We have many active forum volunteers who can troubleshoot many issues, and WordPress.com staff also answer as many threads in the forums as we possibly can. In fact, I spend all day in the forums myself!

Happiness Engineers answer support questions in the order we receive them, and while we try very hard to answer all questions in 24 hours, we do sometimes get behind. But we answer every email that we get.

You can help speed up the process by including as much detail as you can about your problem in your email or forum post. Problem with a specific post or page? Link us directly there. Issue loading your site? Try it in a couple different browsers and let us know which one. And a shiny gold star to anyone who provides a screenshot of the issue — we love us some screenshots because they are the fastest way to show us exactly what you see yourself.

Happiness Engineer Kathryn provides a helpful checklist of things to include:

  • A link to the site
  • Screenshot of the issue
  • Browsers you’ve checked
  • Platform (Mac? PC? iOS? Android?)
  • Your level of technical skill
  • Anything unusual about your setup
  • Anything you’ve already tried to fix the problem
  • Exact steps to replicate problem if it’s not apparent
  • Actions taken just before the problem started

That’s all you need to know, but depending on your specific question, there are a couple of other avenues you might explore. If you have the Custom Design upgrade and you have questions about using CSS to modify your theme, try posting your question in the CSS Customization forum.

While any member of the support staff will do their best to answer your CSS questions, we are not all at the same skill level when it comes to tricky CSS modifications. The staff members who are most expert at CSS work in the CSS forum, and volunteers who are particularly well-versed in CSS help out there, as well.

CSS forum

If you have a premium theme, there’s a special support forum just for your theme that is monitored by the theme developers themselves. If you’re having any problems with your premium theme, you can go directly to the experts! Also, reviewing previously answered questions in your theme’s forum will likely be helpful, and it might even give you some great ideas for how to tweak your display.

Finally, if you need additional one-on-one support, we do offer a Business upgrade. With WordPress.com Business, you gain access to live chat support from 9:00am to 5:00pm Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

So if you haven’t ever reached out for help with your WordPress.com blog, drop us a line! I’ll be waiting for you in the forums.

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    1. Agreed! I deeply appreciate the volunteers who share their knowledge for no other reason but to help others; what a fantastic community of people WordPressers are!

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  2. I’ve very rarely had problems with the WordPress platform – I recommend it to anyone starting a blog. My rare problems were quickly solved, either on the forums or via the contact form. Oh, and by the way, I love the term “Happiness Engineers” !

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    1. I think your ‘blog picture’ is wonderful. In the future I shall thing of it as a happiness engineer. So you survived the 50’s/60’s, too?

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      1. My gravatar? Thanks. I love it; it makes me look more serious than I really am. I think that I must have been Money Penny in a different life. I would have loved to experience the 50’s and 60’s, but I was born in the late 60’s – the only ones who survived anything were my parents 🙂

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    1. Hiya, Kathryn here. 🙂 That’s a good question! I think that defining your level of tech skill often depends on what you’re asking for help with. For example, if you’re asking for assistance with a Custom Design tweak, someone might say something like “I’ve never used CSS before and I find code a little scary, but I would be capable of copy-pasting a bit of CSS code if you provided it.” Just something to help the support folks know how much guidance they need to give you. If I heard something like this from a user, I would probably be extremely detailed in my step-by-step instructions and provide extra reassurance that they won’t break anything by adding the bit of code I’m giving them. 🙂

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  4. question! is there a way to have two post sections… i.,e two pages, two posters, 1 post on one page and the other on the second but both function as the main posting…page?
    does that even make sense lol
    please do let me know!

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  5. Thank you for being so responsive to some of your more feeble-minded users out here. We appreciate you very much.

    I can only hope the competent users do, too.

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  6. I have only ever had one technical hitch in the nine months I’ve been blogging. I was more than impressed by the interest in solving my problem exhibited by the “happiness engineers”. Thanks a million again.

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  8. I love the title “Happiness Engineer” and have always found them to be extremely helpful when I’ve emailed with a question or a problem. That’s one of the main reasons that I’ve recommended WordPress to friends and family who’ve been interested in starting blogs of their own. Thanks for the checklist, Kathryn!

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  10. I love answering questions in the support forum along with the other Volunteers and Happiness Engineers, who I learn something new from every day. One thing I have noticed is that many bloggers do not understand how important it is to keep their operating systems and browser versions upgraded and updated, and to avoid creating “browser bloat” by using too many add-ons or extensions.

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  11. Is the “Comment Luv” plug-in $67 (single site) an ANNUAL fee or a ONE-TIME fee? The pricing page through the Plug-In Directory doesn’t say (or I’m blind as a bat)…

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  12. 🙂 and a nicely balanced (m/f) group just from superficial appearances. A suggestion for actively recruiting and reaching out to more minorities would be a good consideration for the company as it moves forward. But I think WP is great, keep up the great creative space!

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  13. I’m about to move my blog across from Blogger to wordpress. There’s a problem commenting via mobile phones. I’ve tested WP blogs and this has been easy to do.
    There is so much to read on wordpress that I hope to have done enough prep so that the transition goes smoothly – fingers crossed. Gulp.

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  14. If I change themes, will I lose all of my previous posts? Is there a way to back up the old posts to ensure retention? Please respond with very precise step by step instructions as My tech ability is about one inch above that of a newborn infant ! Thanks

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  22. then please help me out . I have a sharing option where I share my post at various social networking site however I have noticed from quit a while it is not working .. any assistance?

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  23. Thank you for letting me put a face to a name or website. It’s great that there are so many happy employees at WordPress ready to help me should I need it (and I have already made use of your i/t dep. Love the term: “Happiness Engineer”. Keep up the good work and have a wonderful Christmas/ Festive season. Kind regards, A. W.

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  24. Thank you. This is very useful. I love the idea that happiness engineers are there ready to answer my blogging problems. I will have to work out the correct wording for my queries and get in touch with you.

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  25. I’m not sure whether I’m in the right forum, but i downloaded sell media and would like to incorporate into wordpress. How do I do that?

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      1. Thank you for responding, Elizabeth. I’m making my entries shorter, so I don’t lose so much. I’m not sure how to contact support or open a thread. I’m not much on the computer, and have my grandson to thank for this outlet.
        Pat

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  29. I find the forum to be a zoo, and a mismanaged one at that. Often when I’ve posted a question, I’m told to go to the response of another thread, which I can’t find of course. Other times I can’t even log in to ask a question. Anymore I just try to avoid the forum and try to find the answer some other way.

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  30. Would it be possible to have some kind of response to the thread on the forums about the changes to the reader please? Many people are still very unhappy and we have had no explanation as to the reasoning behind the changes, let alone any discussion of the possibility to switch it back. Even a confirmation that this is never going to happen would be better than being utterly ignored.

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