Where to Get Help with WordPress
As a popular WordPress resource, we get quite a few requests for 1-to-1 WordPress support, but unfortunately don’t have the resources to help everyone directly. We would love to help everyone out with specific questions and technical support, but really it’s just a matter of time that’s required for our own work, etc. So as you might suspect, we frequently see emails like look like this:
I understand that you are not able to give 1:1 support, so I would like to ask: where (web, forum, IRC) do I get answers about this?
So people are out there looking for a place to get hands-on, one-to-one help for their self-hosted WordPress-related issues. Apparently these days it’s not easy to find. As one reader recently lamented:
The WP forums seem to be pretty dead, I asked some questions there and never got responses or not in a reasonable time. I tried the IRC chat, but no-one seems to know something about SVN there too
Whether or not that’s true, we wanted to put together a solid resource for folks to use for finding good WordPress help, much like we did with our list of WordPress Designers and Developers, where readers could leave comments with their information. In this case, we’re focusing on one-to-one WordPress help, so feel free to shout out any names or resources you might know of (including your own).
Where to get help with WordPress
So without further ado, here’s our list of places to go for WordPress help (in no particular order):
- WP Developers For Hire
- WP Questions
- WordPress Stack Exchange
- WordPress IRC Live Help
- WordPress.org Support Forums
- CSS-Tricks Help Forums
- WordPress.tv
- WordPress Codex
- WordPress.com Support
Also check out the WP Codex page for finding and getting WordPress help.
Share ’em!
Know of other places to get WordPress help? Maybe you provide some yourself, eh? Go ahead and drop a comment and let our readers know where to find WordPress help and support. Thanks! :)
About the author
Jeff Starr is a professional web developer and book author with over 15 years of experience. Jeff works with WordPress every day, designing themes, developing plugins, and securing sites. His books include Digging Into WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and The Tao of WordPress.
41 responses
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komiskaTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!
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Jeff Starr Post AuthorYou’re welcome!!!
Glad to be able to help :)
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Rev. VoodooVoodooPress is my WP site. I help people 1 on 1 as much as possible. I won’t even begin to claim I’m an expert. I have a forum and comment section that I am real active on. It’s mostly fairly basic stuff, a lot of child theme stuff (for whatever the default WP theme happens to be). It’s far from perfect, but I try!
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Jeff Starr Post Author
Excellent – exactly the type of resource we’re talking about in this post. Cheers!
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Rev. Voodoo
Woo hoo, thanks! The forums are kinda bare. I just ditched my old forum garbage to change over to bbPress. Great idea on gathering up the variety of resources available to people!!
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One of the best places, where you get the quickest responses is on the LinkedIn group started by Matt Mullenweg called “WordPress”.
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Thanks for the opportunity! My site has a ton of “How Tos” posted.
One-on-one *personalized* support and coaching is a service I’ve always offered — even before WordPress was born ;-) I pretty much offer any level of support that a WordPress user could need.
You are correct — reliable and courteous help is hard to find since WordPress hit the mainstream. I hear horror stories every day…
Thank you for all you do as well! Digging into WordPress is on my desk 24/7!
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Ken DawesI have a site called The Web Mechanic. I build and maintain WordPress sites and blogs. If someone has a hacked WP site.. I unhack it and add protection to help keep it from happening again.
I also try to help folks where and when I can. I often monitor Twitter to try to help with WordPress problems. @thewebmechanic If it’s something I can do quickly, I’ll even do the fixes for them. If it’s something more complex, I’ll offer to take care of the problem(s) at a reasonable rate. I’m happy to help via email as well!
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Adam W. WarnerI provide WordPress assistance to a variety of user types, but my strong suit is explaining WP in easy to understand terminology to the relative newbie.
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I agree with Bob. The linedin WordPress group is excellent. I hang out there quite a lot.
Another worthy mention ThemeHybrid forums. It does cost 25$ a year, but well worth the investment as you get 1 on 1 support from Justin Tadlock himself.
WpCandy also has a forum. And DevPress also (might be 5$/year to become a member, but you get free premium plugins and themes)
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On WPTIPS I offer one on one support. Similar to Rev. Voodoo, I just try to help people with things I know. One area of expertise is WPML (the plugin that enables sites to be 100% multilingual) and I offer consulting/coding services for that.
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Chip BennettSo, can I be the person who challenges this premise?
The WP forums seem to be pretty dead, I asked some questions there and never got responses or not in a reasonable time.
When I have time to spare, I try to offer assistance in the WPORG Themes and Templates support forum. Quickly auditing: I see that there are six pages – or about 200 posts that are active – and nearly all of which have received replies/interaction – just within the past day.
Other forums:
– Installation: 1 page (~30 posts)
– How-To and Troubleshooting: 18 pages (~550 posts)
– Plugins & Hacks: 30 pages (~900 posts)
– Multisite: 2 pages (~60 posts)
– Miscellaneous and Requests/Feedback: 1 page ( > 30 posts each)The two most active forums are How-To/Troubleshooting and Themes/Templates, and both of these forums are heavily involved with forum volunteers and moderators (Hi, Ipstenu, RevVoodoo, esmi, Alchymyth, et al!).
Plugins/Hacks is also quite active, but relies mostly on the involvement of the developer of each specific Plugin, so it has fewer responses.
Installation is less active, but it generally sees most of its activity immediately following new WordPress versions – at which time, this forum also becomes heavily involved with volunteers/moderators.
Multisite is still a bit of a niche, and as such is less active overall – but it also has a small cadre of highly active volunteers (Hi, Andrea!) that answers questions.
If one needs more prompt response than what I’m seeing in the WPORG support forums, one has probably neither read nor followed the handy Forum guidelines, and is either unduly impatient, needs to learn how to search previous support topics, needs to write better/more specific questions, or needs to look into paid support options.
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I launched a wordless support section my site this week. I have only created a couple basic videos but will be adding them on a weekly basis. They are walkthrough type of videos where I will be demonstrating how to use worpress and some of the best plugins available. If you are interested in receiving a weeky report about new tutorials being posted, feel free to sign up for the newsletter on this page: Compete Now WordPress Tutorials
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Bookmarked!!! Thanks!!
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WPSecurity.com offers free help with WordPress security problems whenever we can. Many times the issue is fairly simple and can be solved with a quick return email or 5-minute conversation. We can’t fix everything that way but it’s worth a quick shout to find out.
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You can always hire a professional to help you out. We do WordPress coaching.
designpx.com/contact
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Greg TurnerLinkedIn.com has several groups devoted to WordPress. It is common to ask questions about WP in these groups and get answers and help.
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AbhishekYou forgot Google.
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In terms of free help:
- I’ve found the forums to be pretty decent.
- The linked in group is also pretty active.
- Stack exchange has a WordPress section. I’ve found good answers here, but never actually asked a question.
For not free, but cheap support the premium theme forums have excellent support on the theme itself from paid employees, and often pretty decent support from the community on general WordPress issues.
If that isn’t what you’re looking for, I and I’m sure many other pro’s will hold one on one or one on several training sessions. Just ask.
I’ve considered formalizing this offering a bit more with monthly fees, forum access, etc, but haven’t gotten around to it.
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The Ultimate Solution at ultimatesolution.biz offers quick, simple, low-cost answers to online challenges, ie WordPress websites and internet business development.
Free initial 1-on-1 training/consult by appointment – just sign up on the site. We need to ensure that your learning style is conducive to my teaching style!
I don’t call myself an expert but I am willing to teach you everything I know about WordPress. I love working with beginners because there is SO much to learn and I remember what it was like for me while learning it.
Please feel free to connect via SKYPE (add contact kerrycarron)
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My husband and I love wordpress! I use the platform to build my clients sites and my husband just wants to blog and help others. His website he created which I am very proud of him for is wordpressnovice.com.
His site is a more “i want to help you out while i learn something in the process also” So go visit if you have a problem and everyone else is busy .. he would be ecstatic to help in anyway he can.
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Rev. Voodoo
Don’t wanna come off the wrong way, and it’s awesome your husband wants to help the community… but wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy – Specifically:
Under no circumstances is it permitted to use WordPress as part of a top-level domain name.
That’s why a lot of us use ‘wp’ or ‘word’ or ‘press’ as part of our domain name, but never ‘WordPress’ as that’s a trademark violation.
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OMG he is going to be devastated! We did not know this. How hard is it going to be to swap his site over to a new domain name? I don’t want him to give up over this.
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Rev. Voodoo
Changing a URL is not so hard. I feel bad that he has already paid for it. But from a community standpoint, it would be best to change the name. The simple reason, because of that trademark thing, the majority of the WP community won’t visit sites with wordpress in the domain name. It is usually assumed they are shady theme shops, etc.
Basically obtain the domain name, route it properly to the hosting, and follow the ‘changing url’ instruction in the codex over on .org.
It’s hard to know that such a thing is a trademark violation, ya know? I didn’t know until someone pointed me to that info. He should definitely NOT give up. We need everyone we can get in the community who is willing to help others!! :)
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Dawn,
Tell your husband to shoot me an email (jason@designpx.com) if he needs assistance moving the site to a new domain. I’ll get him situated at no charge.
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lucindaOh Boy! Oh Boy!! Oh BOY!! Finally a spot on the web where I don’t have to be ashamed to ask my stupid questions, which IMO most of mine are… I’m no expert. I’ve used WP dot com and dot Org for maybe 2 years now, I’m self trained but light-years away from being truly knowledgeable. I know next to nothing about CSS or the current forms of HTML. Some things I see in dot Org themes just scare me off with a cloud of ??????s over my head. I ask inane questions around the dot Org support forum, I know they sound really dumb and that’s probably why no one responds anymore… I hope I won’t sound that stupid here!
The folks at dot Com have been very patient and helpful, I must give credit where it’s due! I think at dot Org the general feeling is that “you can’t be that dumb if you’re using dot Org!” Well, I am….LOLOL
Anyway, Whoo Hoo and Thanks a million for this place! <3
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Ask away! There is no such thing as dumb. :)
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I’m stunned that no one has mentioned WP101 yet. They offer great video tutorials for beginners and they also offer a fantastic video tutorials plugin.
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I would like to learn how to make custom page templates…do they cover that on wp101? if not do you know where to direct me?
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WP101 is more for beginners.
You can try the Codex.
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Jason, I am eternally grateful for you even offering to help me move my old site wordpressnovice to my new one thewpnovice.com for free. Design PX will certainly get my kudos on the site and in my tweets. Thanks again.
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My pleasure, Bill. Anything for a fellow WP addict. :)
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lucinda
Jason sez: I’m stunned that no one has mentioned WP101 yet. They offer great video tutorials for beginners and they also offer a fantastic video tutorials plugin.
Umm. Yeah I know about them. ;o) My trouble, unfortunately, is that I am stuck on rural dial-up…so videos aren’t always the handiest solution to issues I might have… However I do resort to them in sheer desperation sometimes, by downloading the whole file and then viewing offline.
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Best RegardsI loved up to you’ll receive carried out right here. The cartoon is attractive, your authored material stylish. nevertheless, you command get got an shakiness over that you wish be turning in the following. ill indubitably come further before again since exactly the same nearly very regularly inside of case you protect this increase. wpthememarket.com
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Wow…first off I didn’t understand any of that…so you must be spam. Secondly a visit to your knock off theme forest site concludes my first findings.
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lucinda
Thanks Dawn, I always keep my antennae out for new clues for spotting true spam (sometimes I’m just not 100 percent sure!). And the word “market” seems another dead giveaway. ]:-(
SPAM AIN’T COOL, PEEPS….
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Brad DaltonMy own site is all about wordpress and i am happy to answer any questions quickly. I am online 16 hours a day 7 days a week. Solutions for WordPress: wpsites.net
I also offer a list of other WP Experts who specialize in different areas of WordPress
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Julianwordpress is really big thing. although wordpress.org already create the forum and discussion, it still can’t handle all the problem.
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lucinda
UMMM. Okay. Time for A Really Stupid Question, folks…I decided I would ask it here since I’m not getting any replies of any kind anywhere else… Maybe no one knows the answer or it’s another of those “you can’t be that dumb if you’re using dot Org!” situations, LOL…
Anyway. Everyone has seen those updated themes lately with the pagination way down at the bottom, which means links to every post of your site, whether your site has ten pages or 100 pages. Some people might think this is fine and dandy. I however feel that it’s redundant and even ugly, at least from my PoV. Archives and Categories ought to be very sufficient to help visitors navigate over a site. I might be inclined to switch themes occasionally for a different look (perhaps seasonal). But those themes that currently have the lengthy pagination function at the bottom…errh, not for me.
What I’m wondering is, Would there be a means of hacking CSS in order to remove this function? – thanks
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Josh KohlbachI have another website to add to the mix here, mostly for Australians wanting some local help.
My business (Rymera Web Co) offers WordPress help and support. We have many years experience in WordPress and can offer a range of assistance services.
This is a fantastic list for the community though and I encourage WP users to find answers at the above links.
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WPHelpClubWe provide Help for WordPress at the WPHelpClub.com
We have free Tutorials to get started, but we offer also One on One services.If you need something fixed in a hurry to hesitate to contact us.
