Brandon Kelly: The Perfect Support Request

It’s inevitable. We all run into problems with ExpressionEngine or third party add-ons. Maybe there’s a bug or maybe you’re implementing something incorrectly or in a way that is not supported.

Looking for a solution you post to the developer’s forums, send an email or post to the EE forums. Of course you can’t just say “this add-on doesn’t work,” you have to be more specific, do a little homework and make sure the question hasn’t already been answered. Not only is it courteous but it also increases the chances of finding a solution to your problem.

Brandon Kelly, the developer behind popular add-ons Playa 2 and FieldFrame has written up an informative article on his site called: The Perfect Support Request. Brandon walks through a real support request he received where the customer did all of the right things along the way, like checking whether or not this issue came up before:

I can’t tell you how many times people ask me something that I’ve already answered time after time on Get Satisfaction. Very frustrating at first, but I’ve come to expect it. To see that Mahalie has actually taken the time to see if anyone else has had a similar issue, and logically deduced that hers is unique, is nothing short of fascinating.

It’s a worth a read to make sure you can be effective when reporting issues to EllisLab or add-on developers.