Today marks a major step in the evolution of a3rev plugins and themes with the launch of the a3rev support forum. Looking back it is was just 10 short months ago that we got serious about selling Pro Licenses for the plugins that we were developing for our client work. That decision has changed our lives in ways we could not have imagined.
One thing that we did not expect when we started out was that we would actually get to know many of the thousands of people from right across the world who have become a3rev Pro Licenses holders over the past 10 months.
Pro Licenses includes advanced plugin features, auto version updates and importantly same day priority support. Giving you outstanding support has been a priority right from the start. Have we always achieved that? No, not always.
Initially we did support via direct email which was fine when we were small, then as we started to grow we expanded that to a support forum which was created from a hack of the WordPress post comments function. We added that to a HELP tab on each plugins page.
With the rapid growth in numbers of Pro License holders both of these solutions have become unsustainable. We cannot keep up with answering support requests / questions via email, to many started to slip through the cracks. The WordPress comments hack is not a great tool for searching for answers or allowing other users who want to to help out other a3rever’s with their issues.
Forums
Over the past 5 months we have looked at every support solution that we could find, both free and paid. We have looked at and tested help desk software, email support solutions, live chat and forums. The solution we believe best suites the way we interact with a3rever’s is a forum. Having settled on that we have spent the last 2 months looking for a forum that would allow us to give a3rever’s the priority support that we believe they deserve.
bbPress Forums
No matter how many forums we looked at we kept coming back to bbPress because fundamentally it is almost pure WordPress. The plugin lead creator is Matt Mullenweg the founder of WordPress. The plugins brief description says it all for us.
bbPress is focused on ease of integration, ease of use, web standards, and speed. We’re keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add-on features through WordPress’s extensive plugin system. What does all that mean? bbPress is lean, mean, and ready to take on any job you throw at it.
The only thing that sucks about bbPress is the forum search function, but that is no surprise as WordPress search sucks. Not a problem for us as we will use the Predictive Search engine we have developed to build a bbPress Predictive Search plugin plus add any other goodies our users want via a plugin.
Please note with the forum now live we no longer do support via direct email. Click here to join us on the a3rev support forum.