I have a couple of suggestions, one which pertains to support:
I've noticed that sometimes threads including my own have went unanswered for sometimes days, weeks or months even after constant bumping per the 24 hour rule.
Besides the normal forum support, I think there should be a paid ticket system that can guarantee you a timely response or solution to your problem most if not all of the time.
In other words a paid support system beyond the forums, I wouldn't mind shelling out money for this as I am trying to keep my website as error free and user friendly as possible to ensure my sites success and need timely/nearly instant solutions to any problems that may arise.
Also for my second suggestion I want to suggest moving all plugins that are no longer compatible or are reported as having problems with the latest version of Mybb into a plugin/mod archive.
Having incompatible plugins in with the rest only leads to confusion and causes more problems thus more support threads.
Even some early 1.2.x plugins are no longer working with the latest versions of Mybb and haven't been updated yet, so it would be wiser to move them into an archive for outdated/incompatible plugins.
Thanks for reading this, I hope my suggestions are considered or accepted.
It's a good suggestion...it's been brought up before and Chris doesn't seem against the idea. But like all things this requires planning and correct implementation. I think an optional paid support area would be beneficial to some members.
More and more Mybb sites are becoming serious sites with solid revenue. To protect that revenue you have to feel secure in the support systems of your software. While Mybb is promised (by Chris) to be forever free forum system (say that fast 5 times) there isn't really a reason not to have some type of paid support system. Not only would this create an extra revenue stream for Mybb but it might also help compensate staff.
Quote:I wouldn't mind shelling out money for this as I am trying to keep my website as error free and user friendly as possible to ensure my sites succes
Many folks have a "test" forum for trying out forum upgrades and plugins/mods, rather than using their "live" forum.
Quote:and need timely/nearly instant solutions to any problems that may arise.
We'd all like to have "nearly instant solutions", but the thing is, this forum set up is a "free" service, the help/support given is entirely voluntary. For there to be "nearly instant solutions" MyBB would have to be employing folks to offer such a service, since the software is free I doubt that it'd ever happen, nor should it!
Quote: For there to be "nearly instant solutions" MyBB would have to be employing folks to offer such a service, since the software is free I doubt that it'd ever happen, nor should it!
Right..and that's what he is suggestion. Maybe you didn't catch that.
lufbra Wrote:since the software is free I doubt that it'd ever happen, nor should it!
Nor should it? And why shouldn't it? If people are willing to pay for faster support, there is no reason why that shouldn't or couldn't be possible.
lufbra Wrote:or there to be "nearly instant solutions" MyBB would have to be employing folks to offer such a service, since the software is free I doubt that it'd ever happen, nor should it!
Many free and / or open-source projects offer paid support. You can download MySQL, Fedora Linux, etc, but there are paid versions of these projects which come with support.
So how would this work?
Let's say a seperate forum is created for folks who've paid for the services and there's been folks "employed" to help answer problems, do these "employed" folks not help anywhere else as in the "regular" help forums. What about the fact that the majority if not all questions asked in the "new" forum, are going to be asked in the "regular" forums. If the "employed" folks aren't going to help anymore in the "regular" forums, who is going to help? About the "employed" folks, how are they going to be paid, would it be an hourly rate, or a lump sum each week, or whatever? Don't forget it's also a 24/7/365 set up, so there's going to have to be folks available from various world time zones. How can support be guaranteed any quicker than what it already is here.......Bearing in mind we do get folks here already asking/demanding "urgent" help!
I guess one of the biggest things to ask is, how much would be a reasonable cost for folks to pay?
I still don't think this could be a feasible thing to set up.
Again, in the past few years we've had discussions about paid support, but our obstacle is always how support techs will be paid fairly. Any suggestions to that we'll gladly accept.
You'll never be able to balance a budget unless users of the support choose to pay huge sums ($200+) for support. Companies like Fedora, Red Hat, and MySQL have paid support that works because they have corporations paying for support. Until we have large scale companies using our software, I think this will be hard to achieve.
Not the mention the fact that people come to MyBB because it's free. If companies want support, they'd go for vBulletin and IPB without a second though. You have to do something extraordinary to reverse the tide so that your audience are not using your software only because its free.
Commission. That's my resolution. Go to some live support agency, have them learn the software, and then pay them on commission. If they accept those terms, that is.