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Phone Support
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- Empowermom
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 476
- Thanks: 32
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Being a club and all, we all rely on each other for advice when things go wrong. Our forums cover every conceivable topic on Joomla which often have nothing to do with RT, but rather with Joomla or some "other" extension. I have never been turned down for info here. Our Mods go WAY, WAY above and beyond the call of duty, often stepping outside the realm of RT into providing info we could find on our own IF we knew where to find it.
Next: One problem with Joomla is we often need a small piece of knowledge from another designer or developer which, lacking phone support, usually means a fee. Usually, whatever the problem is, we need the answer yesterday and relying on a forum for support may not coincide with our time constraints. Thus, we are forced to go on a mad internet search to solve our problem where we may or may not find an answer or worse, we get terrible information which blows our site out. It can be overwhelming and frustrating, to say the least.
We all have such a vast combined knowledge and mentoring is, in my book, very important when you become a designer. I, for one, love the fact there are talented developers out there cranking out the good stuff for us at a reduced rate and, often, for nothing at all. I always support the efforts of developers with pretty greenbacks whenever I get something tossed my way, sometimes even more than they ask for because they made my life easier.
Often, they, like us, don't make much of a profit in the long haul and they can't afford to supplement their vast documentation with phone support.
How about WE put together a team of people who are willing to donate their phone time for our members. We could list those members by their areas of expertise. I for one, will stand first in line to offer up whatever help I could offer to our members (freely, as in no charge) when I have time available (and I could make time for a couple hours a day if need be). It would have to be a members only area since phone numbers would be posted but I can see a great deal of potential if just a few of us volunteered. We could have some fun finding a name for ourselves as well ("Space Raiders," "Astro Emergency Squad" or "RT Droids" come to mind.)
I believe in pay it forward and I think this would be a great benefit to the members. Our Moderators will have a lighter load, RT won't have to install phone lines and we can give back to our fellow members when they need us most. This would give the staff more time to develop even better templates and extensions.
Our member benefits far exceed what we pay for around here. We should pay it back. Most of us are site designers and I'm pretty sure most of us have cell phones. Members can use their cell phone to call our land lines for help, no one is out of pocket change and we all win as we become smarter together.
Anyone agree, disagree?
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- JEM
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17917
- Thanks: 4
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If you're going to go for it, I'd use Skype...
(Which would allow screen sharing, etc)
Create a separate ID and log in for when you are available, (and if the project goes forward) post the ID here so members could add you to their contacts.
So, if I were a member and there were half a dozen people offering support, and they were in my contacts, I could easily see who was available at the time to help me out.
Considering our customer base and time zones, I don't think you'd want to give cell phone numbers out, or you could be getting support calls at 3am from someone who has a problem at 3pm on the other side of the world.
A bit more to it than that, but that's the basics.... - Thanks,
jim
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- Empowermom
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 476
- Thanks: 32
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Good idea! Part one shaping up already!
Part two will require others..... LOL! I'm really pumped about this. I see all kinds of possibilities.
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- JEM
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17917
- Thanks: 4
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Well if you happen to get volunteers for this project, I suggest the following:
A) As I stated before, create a unique Skype ID for times when you want to log in and help out. IMHO, you wouldn’t want to add contacts to your ‘real’ Skype ID because if you are not available (or in the mood to give support to someone
), especially at the end of the day when you’re chatting with your mom or you BBF, someone is going to be sending you a ‘HELP ME’ message.
Specify EXACTLY what you (each of you) can and are willing to support. With all the RT mods we have now, the overall Joomla / 3rd party component / css / php / expertise is vast, but we all have our niche.
While some moderators can entirely recode a Gantry template to change its width, they’ve never worked with a particular 3rd party component and really can’t offer expertise in using or modifying it.
E.g., if you are an expert in Fireworks, you really don’t want 100 people asking you how to work with JomSocial, Joom!Fish, RS!Form, PhocaGallery, etc.
Ex:
Skype ID: Empmom
Expertise: Fireworks
Skype ID: Socialist
Expertise: JomSocial
Skype ID: RokMan
Expertise: All RT extensions
Skype ID: Photog
Expertise: Galleries in general
Contact these individuals ONLY if you have a problem in their field of expertise, off topic requests will be ignored. - Thanks,
jim
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- Empowermom
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 476
- Thanks: 32
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I'm aware this would be a bit of an undertaking. I guess I'm more or less tossing it out there to see if others might be interested in working together on it. There would have to be a screening process of some sort.
Your post above was exactly what I was thinking. Stick to only those issues you know and make clear guidelines for all concerned. That's where I must put on my thinking cap.
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- faisool
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 422
- Thanks: 0
- i would love to see such a team, im not really an expert so i can join .. but i can imagine how helpful will be. specially sometimes we do need really fast support/answers when running a live site. the idea is great but i guess there will be few volunteers, people really are busy now days
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