Frequently Asked Questions
How should I ask for help on the forum?
The Textpattern Forum is for discussion and support of all things Textpattern.
Please bear in mind that it is a community forum – when you ask for assistance, you are asking volunteers and fellow users, not paid technical support staff.
The usual common-sense conventions of etiquette and politeness apply.
A few rules of thumb specific to the Textpattern forum:
- Please make an effort to check the FAQ and documentation before posting, and check for duplicate threads on the forum. The forum search feature has been unreliable of late; try Google instead.
- Try to choose the most appropriate forum for your question. Troubleshooting is for when you’ve tried something and it doesn’t work as expected. How do I? is self explanatory. Questions about plugins should go to the Plugins forum, not How do I or Troubleshooting.
- If you’re asking for help with a problem or error, please describe the problem clearly and unambiguously. If there is an error message, please include an exact copy of the message in your post. If something doesn’t work as expected, describe what you’re expecting to see, and the actual behaviour. A link to the page in question is usually helpful, and sometimes a screenshot might be appropriate. Descriptions like “doesn’t work” or “it’s broken” are too vague, and unlikely to receive an answer.
- Most suspected bugs aren’t really bugs, but problems caused by external factors. Unless you’ve confirmed the problem with a fresh install, or can identify the problem in the PHP source, start with a Troubleshooting post rather than a bug report.
- Troubleshooting questions will usually be answered quicker if you include a copy of your diagnostics in your post (textpattern > admin > diagnostics). Don’t post the “High” detail version unless someone asks.
- Questions about templates and appearance will usually benefit from including a minimal copy of the code in question. Edit out as much irrelevant code as you can—a short snippet of code is much easier for people to quickly diagnose than an entire page.
- Surround HTML or template code with
<code> </code>tags when posting.
- Surround Textile code with
<notextile> </notextile>tags when posting.
- More detailed examples of how to post HTML, template and Textile code are provided in this FAQ
- If you haven’t received an answer in a day or so, there’s probably a good reason: an ambiguous or rambling question, or not enough information. Don’t “bump” your thread with a single-word post, it’s more likely to annoy people than attract an answer. Post some more information instead.
- Don’t post a troubleshooting question as a reply to an existing thread unless your problem is exactly the same as the one described at the beginning of the thread.
- If you’re requesting a feature, this article lists some of the things you can do to increase its chances.
Posted 19 October 2005, 03:34 by Alex Shiels
