Supporting general questions about premimum themes

Resolved juggledad
(@juggledad)

9 years, 1 month ago

So the FAQ says

Commercial Products
If you use a commercial theme or plugin and need support, please go to their official support channel. In order to be good stewards of the WordPress community, and encourage innovation and progress, we feel it’s important to direct people to those official locations. Doing this will provide the developer with the income they need to make WordPress awesome.

Forum volunteers are also not given access to commercial products, so they would not know why your commercial theme or plugin is not working properly. This is one other reason why volunteers forward you to the commercial product’s vendors. The vendors are responsible for supporting their commercial product.

so if a person messes with a theme file and it’s breaks the site, should you try to help them or direct theem to the theme author?

see https://wordpress.org/support/topic/i-messed-up-my-footerphp?replies=5#post-6627999 for an example.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)

WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

9 years, 1 month ago

I think it’s important to note that these are just “shoulds”. If someone wants to help, even if they’re giving bad advice (not saying they are), then they can. After-all, the person chose to ask for help on WordPress.org.

Miroslav Glavić
(@miroslavglavic)

9 years, 1 month ago

So must we all ask the theme authors for help instead of the forums?

What if others had the same issue? We can help each other.

So in that way of thinking, we should all ask Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little everytime we have issues with WordPress?

If I can answer a question then I will answer the question. I don’t care if it’s a free or premium theme.

It is not up to me to interpret the rules or to close threads.

Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

9 years, 1 month ago

If it’s a free theme from here, you should direct them to the theme’s specific support section at https://wordpress.org/themes/ (For example: https://wordpress.org/support/theme/twentyfifteen ) or at least tag the thread with the theme’s name if you want to help there.

If it’s a commercial theme, and you can help, please feel free to do so, but remember that the user *paid* for the theme, and that price almost always includes support direct from the theme’s developer.

Moderator Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)

Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

9 years, 1 month ago

From that other topic:

Even though this is can be solved in a general way, aren’t you going against that policy and taking away potential income from the theme developer?

Policy isn’t really a word that has much use here in the forums. Paraphrasing James: if you can and want to help then please do. That’s the policy, help other WordPress users. 😉

We don’t have access to commercial code and shouldn’t ask for access either. But if someone breaks their installation and you can post a way to walk them back to a working WordPress then that’s a good thing.