Items discussed at today’s meetup.
WordPress 4.0 was released (hadn’t you heard?)
We had some discussion about if any show stoppers showed up for the new release (it didn’t) and it’s been good. There was discussion about WPML, navigation menus and some hosts not installing the PHP hash module.
That last one got some interesting astonished replies. The WordPress 4.0 Master List was slightly updated as a result of this conversation.
Reviews and when/if to get involved
Reviews are an opportunity for users to chime in on what they liked or didn’t, what they feel needs improvement and what new features they may want. Those reviews can be productive.
However sometimes the reviews can be less than useful or really negative. Commercial disputes are my usual example of that, especially when it involves name calling. When that happens it’s fine to moderate that review or the reviewer.
I don’t mean reviews of a service or a pro version that the user got to by starting with the .ORG plugin or theme. When the plugin or theme author upsells in a way that’s permitted then they are inviting those reviews. How they respond to their customers can be very informative to other users. But when someone is leaving a review in the forums for just the “pro” version then that may not be alright.
It’s tricky and there’s no hard rule but reviews are just like any other post in the forums.
For examples of how to leave productive reviews give these two links a read.
http://chrislema.com/theres-wrong-way-give-plugin-feedback-wordpress-org/
Troubleshooting Handbook section 3 still needs some love and attention
I don’t really have much to say about that. It does and if you wish to contribute please do. 😉
Link to fire off IRC for support via the Codex
This is a fun idea: put a link in the Codex or even make/support that will fire off a web IRC client and drop the person in the #wordpress channel for support. I like the idea but I think the client part may be a problem. You can read about the idea and comment at Clorith’s post in make/support.
The transcript of today’s meetup can be read at this link.