Peer Support – Technical / Marketing / General

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    I’ve been looking for the go-to community where we all help each other through sharing our experience / wisdom / ideas, and hands-on support… but apparently, it doesn’t exist (what?).

    For instance, I’m struggling with technical issues (i.e. removing tags from posts), driving visitors to my site, and ensuring a slick user experience across all browsers / devices.

    I’ve tried tech support, Google, etc, but nothing’s hitting the spot on any of these, let alone all of them. Apparently this is the best place, but it looks a little quiet…

    Any pointers / thoughts welcome. I’d be happy to offer peer support via informal UI/UX testing, ‘fresh eyes’, marketing ideas etc in a reciprocal arrangement.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-dragon · Staff ·

    Hey there,

    Welcome to the WordPress.com forums! We are certainly trying to provide the best community support we can here. If you have any specific questions, we would be happy to take a look and see how we can assist you.

    Feel free to look around and share any thoughts with other posts you find. You can also offer to take a look at other sites and provide feedback if you wish to! Every new member we get helps us build a more vibrant community. 😄

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    Hi there @sundayslicers what you describe is exactly what we’d love to see this Education Community Forum expand into, but you’re right, it is a bit quiet around here.

    We’re working on building in more encouragement to embrace this community through our courses at https://wordpress.com/learn/ because peer to peer support for sharing, swapping ideas, giving/getting feedback and just cheering each other on can be so important. Plus our Happiness Engineers (like myself, others, and @staff-dragon who previously replied) do keep an eye on things to help out however we can.

    I hope you’ll keep popping in and maybe with enough of us showing up we’ll see more and more join :-)

    You’ve certainly got a nice looking site going on with: http://sundayslicers.com/ so well done, it’s something to be proud of!

    You mentioned having a struggle with removing tags from posts. Is it something that isn’t working as expected? The process would be to go to your list of Posts, and click on the title of one to open the editor, then in the settings sidebar on the right, scroll down to the Tags section and click the X on any tag you want to remove, then Update the post.

    If you’re having any technical issues with that process working properly, it could be something related to a theme or plugin conflict. You can do some plugin troubleshooting by following our guide here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/solve-problems-with-plugins/ but you’re also welcome to reach out to our Happiness Engineers via email or live chat for more direct help: https://wordpress.com/help or post a thread in the support forum since this particular topic is more of a “support” request.

    For your comment on “ensuring a slick user experience across all browsers / devices” you’ve seriously got a lovely site and I’m not sure that I can even find any suggestions. It works well and looks great on both my desktop and my iPhone. But is there something specific that is maybe niggling at you that you’d like some thoughts on? We all tend to notice different things and of course we’re are our own worst critics! :-)

    But for the topic of “driving visitors to my site” this is something we can dig into!

    First, I highly recommend our free Intro to SEO course, loads of great information there and we have a great webinar recording with a guest speaker that dives into Effective keyword research. So these are a couple of great resources to dig into that you can then ask us questions about here in the Education Community Forum. We’re always looking for feedback too, so if anything isn’t clear or if a point you were hoping to see covered isn’t, be sure to let us know here in the forum.

    I think the first question I’d ask of you is what is your traffic goal? I see you’re in the UK, so are you targeting a specific region, or going for a broader reach? For a newer site, you’ve got some reasonable traffic happening, but what would “success” look like to you? It’s an important question because success looks different to everyone. There’s actually a piece in one of our Blogging course lessons on stat perspective too. In fact, you might find various parts of the Intro to Blogging course quite helpful as well.

    I see that you’re using MailPoet as well, which is great! So tell us a bit more about what is and isn’t working for you with the setup you’ve got, what you’ve tried that didn’t work out the way you expected, and maybe we can come up with some suggestions of things you can consider or try out, or at least do some brainstorming.

    We’d love to dig into this conversation more with you!

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    Hi @tanjoymor – thanks for the comprehensive response, and apologies for the delay getting back to you. OK, so…

    I’m really perplexed by the lack of community / engagement – feels like I’m missing something and paying for .com when everyone else is saving money and on .org (which seems well supported, even though I’d have thought they’d need less of it).

    Thanks for the feedback on the site – I’m broadly happy with it but frustrated by a succession of glitches.

    I know how to remove tags – I meant that I don’t want them to be visible on the posts.

    The comment re slick browsing experience is because some people have mentioned glitches when viewing via a certain browser, and I thought it would be cool if a community could check each other’s sites to reassure that it’s working on Firefox / Chrome / Edge / Android etc.

    Thanks for the links to help on SEO, which I’ve looked at, but think I already understand. I was thinking more about ideas for ways to market the site, like via directories, advertising, offline etc.

    I’m focussed on the UK, and am looking to build to hundreds of visitors a day, then thousands.

    I love Mailpoet, despite a few glitches with sections not displaying for some recipients. My main issue is that the Captcha doesn’t seem to work for some people via a browser (seems better on mobile), so any thoughts or pointers on that front are very welcome.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    Hi there @sundayslicers

    I’m really perplexed by the lack of community / engagement – feels like I’m missing something and paying for .com when everyone else is saving money and on .org (which seems well supported, even though I’d have thought they’d need less of it).

    This particular community forum is fairly new and has been taking some time to get momentum. But we’re optimistic that it will continue to gather steam as we continue to grow our educational offerings in https://wordpress.com/learn/. Which is really the purpose of this particular forum.

    We also have our main support forum that is much more active for general support inquiries.

    It might be worth noting that use of the forums doesn’t require a paid plan, and as a customer with paid hosting with WordPress.com you also have access to our email and live chat support when you have site specific questions that you need help with.

    In terms of “saving money” through a self-hosted WordPress site, that honestly depends entirely on your setup and needs. WordPress.com builds in a significant amount of benefits into the hosting plans, and in particular on the Business plan, you have a higher level of security, real-time backups are included, 24/7 support, there is no traffic or bandwidth throttling… the list goes on. Many “cheaper” hosts appear cheaper because none of this is included and when you add all the pieces the cost very often ends up being far more. You can read more about some of the detailed differences between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress sites here: https://wordpress.com/go/business-website-guidance/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org/

    Also, WordPress.org doesn’t directly provide “support” the way WordPress.com does, but it does have a very active developer community. So it really comes down to needs. But at the end of the day, WordPress.com is using the core WordPress software, so you can absolutely utilize the forums from dotorg as well if it’s appropriate and applicable to something you need.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    I know how to remove tags – I meant that I don’t want them to be visible on the posts.

    Ah! Thank you for that clarification. You’re using a custom third-party Classic theme. So you’d want to reach out to the theme developer or review their support docs here: http://golfclub.themerex.net/doc/ for specifics on this.

    The theme does have a ton of settings available in the Customizer, though admittedly after a quick look I wasn’t finding a setting specific to hiding “tags”. If their documentation or support doesn’t provide the answer you need, another possibility would be to use CSS to hide them if you’re familiar with working with CSS. You can add that in the Customizer under Additional CSS, though you may need to ask the theme developer for the specific CSS you’d need for it to work with their theme.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    The comment re slick browsing experience is because some people have mentioned glitches when viewing via a certain browser, and I thought it would be cool if a community could check each other’s sites to reassure that it’s working on Firefox / Chrome / Edge / Android etc.

    Got it. And I agree, this would be a terrific use of the community. I wonder if posting a new topic thread specific to this purpose would work better? Like maybe something along the lines of: “Feedback request: How does sundayslicers.com perform on your device and browser of choice?” type of thing?

    We’ll continue to see what additional encouragement we can work into the course materials along these lines as well. I’d really love to see more and more creators having these sorts of discussions with each other.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    Thanks for the links to help on SEO, which I’ve looked at, but think I already understand. I was thinking more about ideas for ways to market the site, like via directories, advertising, offline etc.

    That’s great on the SEO side of things. And makes sense on the marketing side too. I’ve personally found directories to be so hard to nail down and yet imo they should be such a valuable part of the online ecosystem. I know WordPress.com is doing additional work on The Reader feature and while not specifically a “directory” it is a great gathering ground for like-minded creators, especially with the strategic use of tags.

    For advertising, we now offer a feature called Blaze specifically for this reason, especially since digital advertising in general is a world of its own to master. But again, crowdsourcing various advertising ideas through peers would be terrific. We’ll see if we can maybe work some suggestions along these lines into our SEO course, as it’s the most relevant course we have right now that would tie-in with marketing.

    I’m focussed on the UK, and am looking to build to hundreds of visitors a day, then thousands.

    So definitely some local/regional SEO would be beneficial for this. I’ve recently learned about https://ahrefs.com/ as well, which is a terrific tool. While not free, if you’re really serious about SEO it could be a worthwhile investment.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    I love Mailpoet, despite a few glitches with sections not displaying for some recipients. My main issue is that the Captcha doesn’t seem to work for some people via a browser (seems better on mobile), so any thoughts or pointers on that front are very welcome.

    Interesting on the Captcha. Could you send an email to help@wordpress.com regarding this and we can forward it to our MailPoet team to see if they have any further insight.

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    Thanks @tanjoymor

    Thanks for the info re .com v .org – I’m in the right place, as I don’t have the technical skills / time / interest to learn them. I’ve explored the main support forum (that’s who directed me here), and live / email support, with varying levels of success. Mostly, it seems that using a 3rd party theme and plugins mean there’s understandably limited support, or from the 3rd parties after a short time or ever if free.

    I’ve looked at support docs for removing tags, and tried to get support, all to no avail. I’ve tried several CSS that I’ve found online, and even asked ChatGPT, but nothing seems to work. It’s less of an issue as tags actually have multiple results when clicked.

    OK, let’s try your suggestion re feedback request – will do shortly.

    Thanks re SEO – will look at The Reader and Ahrefs. I’ve tried Blaze, which was interesting and economical but doesn’t allow targeting as specifically as I’d like (i.e. Europe smallest geography).

    I’ll happily send an email re Mailpoet.

    Thanks again – appreciated.

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    @tanjoymor FYI, when emailing help@wordpress.com, I get an automated response suggesting that because it looks like I have a free WordPress account, I can’t get support that way. Bit disappointing, since it’s from a mailbox I pay WordPress for, and as it’s linked to an account that I pay several subscriptions (and various extras) for.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    @sundayslicers I see your feedback request post, indeed let’s hope you get some bites from other members.

    Mostly, it seems that using a 3rd party theme and plugins mean there’s understandably limited support, or from the 3rd parties after a short time or ever if free.

    Yes, this is true. Though your theme developers do seem to offer a support desk: https://support.themerex.net/ have you tried reaching out to them directly about the CSS you need for removing tags?

    Interesting on Blaze, thank you for that feedback, I’m going to pass that along to the team.

    That’s super odd on the email, though maybe it’s because it’s a direct email 🤔 I’ll have to test that. But from within your WordPress.com account, if you click on the Help Center ? icon there should be an option to “Email”, maybe give that a try. Or click the Contact Support button from here: https://wordpress.com/help (when you’re logged into WordPress.com) – it will look like this: https://d.pr/i/y78M7s With your site you’ve definitely got 24/7 priority support.

    When you do email, be sure to clarify that you’re looking to pass along an issue to MailPoet. The more information you can provide the better. It could possibly be a bug that needs investigating.

    Cheers!

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    @tanjoymor many thanks again.

    I did try contacting ThemeRex but it seems to require a license key which I guess has expired (it didn’t work anymore). Maybe I’ll try another route.

    Thanks for sharing on the Blaze feedback.

    I’ll contact support via that route, which looks to display fine.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    Ah, that does make sense on the license @sundayslicers they are typically a recurring thing.

    Also, I heard back from our Blaze team, and they have been making improvements on the geo targeting, so I recorded a little test. It is a bit quirky when searching but you can get quite granular with it. Even I was surprised that South Shields was in the list haha: https://d.pr/v/lniCW6

    But the team appreciated the feedback and they’re going to continue iterating on it. They suggested that it might be nice if a list of suggested regions show up when doing a broader search. So I think we will see more changes coming to this feature :-)

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    Thanks (yet again) @tanjoymor – I guess the Blaze geos have just been updated, as I’m fairly sure that before it just had a drop down with continents on?

    Anyways, this could be really awesome, as my site has a lot of content that related to my country (Cheshire, England), so I’m going to write a specific piece and try promoting is with Blaze.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    You could be right on the Blaze geos being a recent update @sundayslicers, I didn’t ask them when it had been updated, but it is getting active attention 😊

    Sounds good on writing a specific piece to promote! Definitely feel free to provide additional feedback on it 😊

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    Hi @tanjoymor – are you able to check if the locations actually work? I selected the areas local to me, and was surprised that they still estimated c2,000 impressions a day (just 2 interests selected). Now I check on the campaign, the Location says ‘Everywhere’, so I’m guessing that there’s a glitch stopping the locations being filtered, or that the functionality isn’t live. This is pretty critical to my interest in using Blaze, as my site has localised interest.

  • tanjoymor · Staff ·

    Thank you for the details @sundayslicers. I’ve been away from work for a birthday break 😊 but I’ve now submitted this message to our Blaze team and will let you know as soon as I have more information!

  • sundayslicers · Member ·

    Hi @tanjoymor and happy belated birthday!

    Thanks, as ever, for the support. Strangely, around the same time as my last message, the campaign seemed to pause itself, and didn’t spend any more money – I was billed $2 at the end of the campaign. I presumed you or someone saw my message, realised that there was an issue and stopped it.

    I notice that it’s still allowing the selecting of towns and regions – be great to know if this functionality works. If so, I’ll dive back in. If not, it shouldn’t be suggesting it does.

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