The WordPress.com forums are a great place to get support for your own site, but did you know that it is also a great place to help others?
The WordPress.com forums represent an active community of WordPress.com users. While staff members are active in the forums, there are a lot of volunteers ready and willing to help as well.
In this guide
Many forum volunteers are veteran WordPress.com users, but that shouldn’t scare off a new volunteer. Even if you don’t think you are a WordPress.com “expert,” if you’ve been using WordPress.com for a while, there is a good chance that you know more about the platform than someone who just started.
There are no set criteria for volunteering and helping in the WordPress.com forums. Pitch in where you see fit. However, aside from a willingness to make a difference, it is recommended that you have the following:
- Familiarity with the basic WordPress.com features.
- An understanding of the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
- Ability to understand the intent behind the question, not just the question itself. Part of providing outstanding support is trying to figure out what the user is asking, even if they haven’t been able to express themselves fully.
- Patience and grace when dealing with (sometimes frustrated) users.
- Willingness to take the extra step to help solve problems.
Here are a few things that might help you in your volunteer journey:
- WordPress.com has extensive support guides written by our Happiness Engineers and product developers. You should be able to find the answers to most questions by searching here.
- We also have courses and in-depth webinars for users looking to reach a specific goal with their sites.
- You can get a lot of information on a domain by using the Site Profiler. It can also help you figure out who the hosting provider is for a site not on WordPress.com.
The following advice can help with becoming an effective volunteer:
Create a couple of private free sites for yourself. These can come in handy when trying to troubleshoot bugs with themes or plan-specific features or to try things out to see how they work without messing up your actual site.
Be sure to include links that back up your answers. These can be links to relevant support guides or to a previous forum thread where someone else answered the same question. (When linking forum threads, check the date of the thread to avoid giving outdated information.)
Remember to tag threads with relevant keywords. That way, finding relevant threads is easier for someone searching for answers on a specific topic. Tagging a thread with the title of the relevant support guide can also be helpful. For example, when a user inquires about making money on their site, you would add the tag monetize your site. Tags are also searchable, like this: https://wordpress.com/forums/tags/monetize-your-site
When you come across duplicate posts, please add the tag duplicate to all the duplicate threads and reply to the oldest or most relevant one. (Don’t tag the thread you reply to.)
Many volunteers use pre-defined replies that they can copy-paste to reply to more users in less time. Be specific: tailor pre-written replies to the question you’re answering. Not all questions will exactly match the answer you’ve prepared, so check if you need to add, remove, or change something before posting.
Please don’t use someone else’s pre-defined replies, but feel free to make your own if you find yourself answering the same questions repeatedly.
WordPress.com is our version of the self-hosted WordPress software you can find on WordPress.org. Make sure you understand the difference.
To determine whether a site is hosted on WordPress.com, add .well-known/hosting-provider to the end of the site URL. This may not work with all hosts, but it will work on WordPress.com.
While we can provide limited help with some Jetpack questions, owners of self-hosted sites who seek troubleshooting help will be much better served by visiting the WordPress.org forums, contacting their theme or plugin provider, or contacting their hosting provider directly.
For Jetpack issues, you can point users to Jetpack Support.
If the user has the WooCommerce plugin installed on a WordPress.com site, they can open a ticket while logged into their account at this link: https://woocommerce.com/my-account/create-a-ticket/
If the user has a self-hosted site (running the WordPress software on their own web hosting) with a paid WooCommerce extension, they can open a ticket at the same link above
If the user has a self-hosted site and they have a general WooCommerce question but don’t have a paid WooCommerce extension, they can post in the WordPress.org WooCommerce forum: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce/
It’s good to remember that as a volunteer, you also act as an ambassador for WordPress.com. At times, you may wish to remind other users about our Forums Community Standards, but you must also hold yourself to these standards.
In terms of working with other volunteers and staff, please also try to keep the following in mind:
- Be nice. If someone posts an inaccurate or incorrect answer, help them in the same way you would like to be helped if it were you.
- Be teachable. WordPress.com changes every day, and no one knows every aspect of the platform. If we all are willing to learn from each other, it will only improve the quality of the help we give our users.
- Attribute. If you quote another volunteer’s answer, mention whose answer you’re using and link it back to the original thread. When quoting a staff reply also please include a link to the original thread for added context.
You can bring any thread to the staff’s attention by adding the tag modlook to the thread. Our Happiness Engineers work through all tagged threads daily, replying to the oldest threads first.
Before tagging a thread for staff, please ask the user for relevant info like the URL of the site or the domain with which they need help if they didn’t provide it in the original post.
Some threads should always be tagged for staff attention:
- We do not help with Terms of Service issues in the forums. This includes requests for help with Forums Community Standards, reporting sites violating our terms or posting mature content, and suspension appeals. Please add the
modlooktag for staff so we can handle these threads. - If someone posts sensitive information like passwords, credit card details, phone numbers, and transaction IDs for upgrades. When this happens, also tag it with
remove personal info. - If a post is clearly spam, tag it with both
modlookandspammer. Please don’t reply to the spammer. If you reply to them we cannot mark the thread as spam, only close it, and our spam filter cannot be taught to filter similar threads out automatically. - If a user (or another volunteer) is abusive, please don’t engage with them, but tag the thread for staff instead.
- With domain, refund, and billing-related questions and renewal problems, feel free to answer, but still tag the thread so we can double-check it. If our help is not needed, we’ll remove the tag without a reply.
- Requests to undelete a site or reverse an account cancellation – only staff can help with this.
If you have a specific question or feedback for staff, feel free to create and tag your own thread. While we won’t always be able to implement your suggestions or give an answer, we value hearing from our volunteers.
Thank you for your willingness to help in the WordPress.com forums and for giving back to the community!
