Providing support on the WordPress.org forums is one of the easiest ways to contribute to WordPress and those who do are some of the unsung heroes of the project. One of those heroes is James Huff known as MacManX on the forums.
Huff has been supporting users for 13 years and recently celebrated an awesome milestone reaching 50K replies.
In this spotlight, we learn what drives Huff to provide support, what he’s learned, and what users can do to improve the likelihood a support request will be resolved.
What drives your desire to help people with WordPress on the support forums?
I like helping people succeed with WordPress. It’s kind of a legacy for me, because you never know if solving one blocker will lead to a life-changing site or service. If anything, I hope I made a few days better for a few folks.
Any trends or common issues you’ve noticed in the past few months/years?
Nothing out of the ordinary. Plugin and theme conflicts will always be the most common.
What tips or suggestions do you have for users to increase the likelihood of solving their problem?
Try the Health Check plugin first, its Troubleshooting Mode is great!
What lessons have you learned by providing support in the forums?
I learned about almost everything I have done to customize my sites first by helping someone else do it. Overall, I have learned quite a bit about WordPress just by helping other people.
To learn more about James and how he got involved with supporting the WordPress community, watch this presentation by Andrea Middleton from WordCamp Seattle 2017.
James has done great work on the support forums and the WordPress community is lucky to have volunteers like him. Thanks for spotlighting his contributions.
I also think this quote “I learned about almost everything I have done to customize my sites first by helping someone else do it. Overall, I have learned quite a bit about WordPress just by helping other people.” is a great example of the benefits of volunteering in the support forums. You aren’t just helping others, but in many cases you are able to learn in the process.