The Future of ExpressionEngine Support

Since March there has been an ongoing thread in the ExpressionEngine forums about the EllisLab support services and how they’ve managed to scale (or not scale) with the growth of the community. It started with this post:

We’ve been using EE for 3 years now professionally.  We’ve launched tons of EE websites on EE1 and a few now on EE2.  I used to love EE for two main reasons; the system was great and the support was top notch.

While I still think the system is great, I feel like the support has gone down hill since EE2 was released.  I’ve been holding off making this thread, hoping that it was temporary but it is really so unreliable and slow with many issues that I don’t know what we are paying for.

There are several discussions happening but the one that interests me the most is about how so many tech support requests are quickly (and sometimes rather bluntly) moved to the CodeShare Corner and left to the community to figure out.

As Tony Geer said in the thread:

Codeshare Corner is basically where posts go to die. A lot of time questions are asked and the support response is that they’re shifting it over there for community help and it never gets answered and that seems to be the end of it.

I went through this entire thread and some other threads that have been moved to CodeShare. I do agree that, on the surface, it does seem like tech support just tosses people over to CodeShare quite a bit. Admittedly, a little more explanation from the support staff could be given or an initial attempt at helping solve the problem, giving suggestions or at least a nudge in the right direction (and in some of the threads I read they did just that).

But, as someone who provides support for my own products, I have to say that there’s a fine line between a general support request and a question that is so specific to the site someone is building that it can sometimes border on consulting services. I get this a lot and I always try to be as helpful as possible but ultimately and unfortunately I’m unable to solve very specific problems for someone. I do try to give customers some guidance and let them know I’m here to help out as much as I can. I’m sure add-on developers run into the same situation.

It is definitely in the best interest of EllisLab to make sure their customers are successful using the software. Successful experiences turn people (like many of us) into fans. And fans rave (and sometimes, when they’re disappointed, rant) on Twitter and other places online about ExpressionEngine. That’s one reason EE is as popular as it is.

Not to oversimplify this too much but part of the problem, I think, is the name of the forum area to which these requests are moved. “Codeshare Corner” must be confusing to people. It is to me. I thought it was a place for coders to share code. The full description of the forum area makes it clearer but not clear enough to overcome the geeky name.

I imagine a lot of EE users don’t consider themselves coders at all. They use EE exactly because they aren’t coders. Maybe that’s why, as Tony pointed out, threads go there to die. A renamed forum space might help more community members click into the forum, read open threads and help others.

Update: EllisLab has renamed the CodeShare Corner to “Community Help,” which is a much better name!

Another topic that has been raised (by many including me last year) is that the forums aren’t good enough for support. Sometimes we need private threads or tickets where we can discuss, in confidence, the details of a project. However, there is concern that a blind ticket system would hide helpful information from others. I don’t see this as a problem because the really helpful information (How do I do x with EE?) is always bumped out to the Codeshare Corner anyway.

All that being said, EllisLab has readily admitted that support isn’t where they want it to be and they are working on improving support to meet demands. The thread in the forums is open and they encourage you (and I encourage you) to chime in with some constructive feedback. The staff is listening to the requests.