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Getting your WordPress questions answered can be tough, not to mention time-consuming.
You want to ask a friend who knows WordPress but don’t want to waste their time with a silly question.
Maybe you decide to reach out to developers, but they just tell you they can do it for a price.
There must be another way!
Fortunately for you, there are a few WordPress support forums and resources that can help you answer questions and make the changes you need on your WP website.
In the following roundup of the best WordPress support forums, you’ll find WordPress experts who are more than happy to help you troubleshoot website issues or questions… without expecting anything in return. Plus, if you spend enough time in forums, you can pick up other valuable tips from questions that other people submit!
Tips for Using WordPress Help Resources & Forums
Before we look at the best WordPress forums and help resources to turn to for website questions, let’s quickly discuss tips for getting the most out of them.
- Many of the questions or issues you need to raise in WordPress support forums have already been answered. Before you ask for assistance, search through previous conversations and responses to make sure your question hasn’t already been answered.
- Don’t be so hasty to throw a question into a WordPress help forum. If you haven’t taken time to troubleshoot the issue on your own, forum participants might not be so willing to help when the answer is painfully obvious.
- When you do have a valid question, make sure you fully understand what is happening so you can present full details. Screenshots or videos are also helpful if you’re not sure how to describe the problem properly.
- Keep the topic relevant to the forum. As you’ll see below, some forums focus on specific areas of interest, so you shouldn’t deviate from that with irrelevant questions.
- Mind your manners. Be polite and show gratitude when someone has taken the time to answer a question. If you receive an impolite response, keep it civil. This is the place to get support, not get into a fight. Always make sure to review the rules of conduct in the forum (if any) before you post a message to it.
Now, let’s look at which of these trust WordPress forum resources you should use:
WordPress.org
If you need help with WordPress, this could be golden for you. You’ve built a website on WordPress, so why not get your WordPress help straight from the horse’s mouth?
The WordPress.org forum has a variety of resources to help you get the most out of WordPress.
Here you can find guides for getting started with WordPress as well as gain free access to a forum with millions of previous posts.
Because WordPress has such a strong community, most plugin and theme developers have profiles here, so you may be able to get answers from the developers who can give you the best answers.
1. Create An Account
First, create a WordPress.org account. Click login in the top right corner of the Support page and click Create an account.
You’ll receive an email with your new password, so keep an eye out for that.
2. Find The Right Forum
If you have a specific question, you’ll first need to find the right area to ask your question.
Do you have a question about troubleshooting an issue? Themes and templates? Plugins? Installation? Find the right forum on the right side of the Support page.
You’ll find the main WordPress forum hubs on the Forums page. You can click through and explore the questions in each forum or submit your own.
Or you can use the search bar to locate your question (if it’s already been broached). This will also give you a quick way to sift through a number of WordPress forums at once.
3. Create A New Topic
If you want to ask a new question, you’ll need to create a new topic for someone to answer.
Scroll to the bottom of the forum page and follow the steps highlighted in yellow.
Then be sure to fill all the provide fields:
- Topic Title: This provides a general overview of what your question will be about. Don’t ask your actual question here, but more of a brief description. Don’t write “Why isn’t my theme showing up correctly? Do write: Theme Problem!
- Link: By providing your website link, it’ll be easier for forum respondents to give you a more accurate answer. They don’t need access to WordPress; just your site.
- Comment Box: Here’s where you write your question! Be as detailed as possible, especially if it’s a somewhat technical question, as that will help the forum experts give you a comprehensive answer. If you want to share a screenshot image or video of the problem, do so by including a direct link to it here.
- Topic Tags: Include a few tags that are related to your question to make it easy for your experts to find it. Asking a question about a theme? Use both the tags “theme” and “template”.
Be sure to check the box next to Notify me of follow-up replies via email to be sure you’ll receive alerts when your question is answered.
Then click Submit!
4. Wait For Answer Notifications
Now’s the time to wait for your query to be answered. The good news about this official WordPress support forum is that there are moderators working 24/7 to make sure that questions are being answered and people are overcoming their challenges.
So you shouldn’t have to wait long!
WordPress Codex
The WordPress Codex is part of the support forum, but is really the knowledge center for everything technical as it relates to WordPress help.
Because WordPress is open-source, meaning anybody can have access to the core code and suggest changes and improvements, the WP knowledge base is seemingly never-ending.
The most popular areas of interest are:
- What You Most Need to Know About WordPress: This is the most important must-know info for anybody running a WordPress website. You can do anything from install the most current version of WordPress to review a full glossary of every WordPress-related term.
- Learn How to Use WordPress: The ultimate how-to guide for the most straightforward tasks in WordPress. Check here first if you have a pressing question that you believe has challenged others as well.
- Working With Themes: If your theme is acting up, here’s where you come. Most widely used theme developers have a profile here, so you can most likely find the developer of your exact theme and ask them a question directly. Or you can contact them through the support forum for the theme itself:
This is also available for each plugin listed in the repository.
- Write a Plugin: This one is a bit more advanced, but if you’re thinking about developing a WordPress plugin, you’ll want to read over everything here before getting started.
- Contribute to Development: Remember when I said anybody can contribute to core WordPress functionality? Here you can report a bug or contribute recommendations for improvement in the next update.
Facebook Groups
There are a few super-active Facebook groups where beginners and advanced users alike can ask questions and get WordPress help. These are great resources not only to get answers to your questions but to meet some great people in the WordPress community.
[bctt tweet=”👍 Be careful to follow polite etiquette in Facebook Groups. Administrators are tough on self-promotion and spammy activity and you don’t want to get banned! #WordPress” username=”thewpbuffs “]1. Find the Right Group
Facebook has WordPress groups for everything. But the following list of Facebook groups is where you’ll get the most value in terms of asking questions and gaining valuable insights them improve the way you work in WordPress.
- Advanced WordPress: This is the premier WordPress group on Facebook! The idea behind this group is simple, a place for WP developers on Facebook to meet and share ideas and knowledge with a focus on the most advanced features and functionality without necessarily having to go into any basics.
- Supporting WordPress Products: This group is for professionals who provide free/pro support for WordPress products. They chat about all things related to support. Just talking about doing support and doing it better.
- WordPress: This group is for helping people find answers to their WordPress.org (self-hosted) questions.
- WordPress Freelancers: This group is for anyone making a living with WordPress (or wanting to). Freelancing is challenging, but also extremely rewarding. By sharing our experiences we can help each other and grow our businesses.
- WordPress Help: This group is also for helping people to find answers to their WordPress.org (self-hosted) questions.
- WordPress Speed Up: This group is for all WordPress.org speedupers skill levels who want to know more about how to speed up your sites. The purpose of this group is to help you speed up your sites, not to speed them up instead of you, and for free.
- WordPress, SEO, & Internet Questions: This group is for helping people to find answers to WordPress.org, SEO and Internet questions.
- WordPress Security: This is an WordPress security group with a lot of experts and almost-experts. They are beginner-tolerant, although they may point you toward beginner security resources.
- WordPress Plugins: This group is for helping people to find answers to their WordPress.org (self-hosted) plugin questions.
- All About WordPress: This group is dedicated to encouraging discussion of WordPress-related topics.
- WP Care Market: Group for Web Professionals: This group is all about providing quality website care and support to clients! Open to all website professionals to gather resources, support, and training for implementing website care in their business the right way. Highly related to what we do over at WPMRR!
- Turnkey Websites Blueprint Community: This group helps people share tips and resources for building an automated turnkey website system using WordPress.
- WP Innovator: This group is for design and web agencies that are growing their business online. And if you happen to be using WordPress you might find this a particularly useful resource!
- Digital Mavericks: This group helps digital professionals take their craft to the next level. The guidelines for this group are simple: be helpful, take massive imperfect action, share everything you can, ask for help and don’t spam.
- The Fearless Freelancer: This group is designed to provide a high-quality source of education, insights, and other information for freelancers. Content will be focused on helping members transition into a full-time freelance career or grow their existing freelance business.
Speaking of Fearless Freelancer – meet Carrie (AKA Princess Leia) on the WPMRR WordPress podcast. Carrie spills the beans on everything…from why you feel like you’re not being paid enough, why not knowing what to do is okay as long as you have persistence, how to network with like-minded people, and much more! She’s a teacher at heart so have your notebooks ready, enjoy!
And if you’re using specific plugins, themes or page-builders, there are some fantastic specific Facebook groups and communities for some!
- Beaver Builder: This group has become one of the largest hubs of Beaver Builder users and web pros. They’re glad to have you!
- Elementor Advanced Users: This group is dedicated to the advanced users of the Elementor Page Builder for WordPress. Or if you’re a designer who works with Elementor? Check out The Elementor Design Community.
- WP Rocket Users: This group is the place to be if you love the WordPress caching plugin WP Rocket. Here you can share the results you obtained using it and get in touch with other WP Rocket users. Don’t be shy, if you want to share/learn tips and tricks for using WP Rocket, feel free to write your post or leave a comment!
- ManageWP Users: This group is for anybody using ManageWP and wants an online community to continue to find ways to use it better
WP Buffs also manages 4 Facebook groups, one for our direct customers, one for our white-label partners, one for our affiliates and one for our video course community members. These are all closed groups so if you’d like to join, you’ll need to officially join us!
2. Join The Group
If the group is private, you need to request to join.
Click Join and respond to the questions provided. These are here to help administrators vet your eligibility.
If you fit what they’re looking for in terms of membership, they’ll grant you access to the page.
3. Read Group Rules
This is a big deal. Administrators have to deal with some spam in these groups, so don’t be the person who posts a link to their own blog and doesn’t read the group’s rules.
You can usually find these rules in a pinned post or in the group description.
Or in the group description for private groups:
Be polite, helpful and follow directions and you should be fine!
Most requirements relate to not posting self-linking promotions, being courteous and not selling anything, but read the rules specific to each group to make sure you’re posts are in-line.
3. Ask Questions
Go ahead and ask questions!
Most of these groups have active members and helpful administrators, so your question shouldn’t go unanswered for long.
Making WordPress Slack
Many businesses today use Slack for internal company and external client communications. The same goes for web developers and agencies that want to centralize all communications in a single platform and establish dedicated channels for the things they discuss most.
It’s not surprising then that WordPress has its own Slack channel. It’s called Making WordPress.
You can access it from your browser window or you can use Slack in a desktop or mobile app. The main reason to use one of the apps is so that you may aggregate all of your Slack groups in one place as opposed to having to sign in and out of the individual channels in your browser. So keep that in mind when choosing a platform to use it from.
Keep in mind that this is a Slack channel for WordPress developers — ones who work on the core and those who build themes and plugins for it. This is not the place to go if you have a question about why a theme doesn’t look right on your website or how to get started with the CMS. This is for WP professionals only so the WordPress help you look for here should be related to that.
In terms of getting started, here is what you need to do:
1. Visit the Slack Info Page
Making WordPress is not a public Slack channel, so you have to request access to it. Visit the Slack info page on wordpress.org and walk through the steps under “Joining the WordPress team on Slack”.
2. Log into WordPress
In order to gain access, you first must be logged into your wordpress.org account. Then, you can ask WordPress to send you an invite to the Slack channel.
3. Know Where to Post
As you can see in the screenshot above, Making Slack is a simple enough forum. There are three channels where messages are left:
- Announcements – This channel is where you’ll receive updates about the WordPress core. For the most part, it’s just Twitter news links. You won’t want to submit questions here.
- Core – This is where you’ll find notes about the latest core commits. It’s more of a place to find out how the core recently changed as opposed to asking questions about it.
- Slackhelp – This is the forum part of Making WordPress. Since people here are WordPress developers, questions need to be targeted to the highly technical aspects of the core code.
That said, if you end up here in error and ask a question that is outside the scope of Making WordPress, that’s fine.
You’ll probably just receive a response from someone indicating you’re in the wrong place and then they’ll point you to where you need to go.
Stack Exchange
WordPress development on Stack Exchange is a question and answer forum for WordPress administrators and developers. Anybody can ask or answer questions and the best, most helpful responses are upvoted to the top so they’re easily found by those who have questions. Technical WordPress help at it’s best!
This forum is slightly more technical than some of the others, so this would be a good place to come if you have a difficult question that would require the opinion of a WordPress developer. If you’re accessing the source code of your WordPress site, ask questions here first.
One advantage of using this forum is that it has some really experienced WordPress users. They’ll most likely be able to get you the answer you need.
1. Sign Up
Click Sign Up from the homepage.
Sign up with Facebook, Google+ or your email.
You’ll receive an email with your new password, so keep an eye out for that.
After you click the link in your email confirming your new account, you’ll want to select a profile picture, your display name and then click Complete Registration.
2. Ask a Question
You’ll find Ask Question buttons located in the top-right corner of Home and Questions pages.
It’s then up to you to fill in the pertinent details for your question.
- Title: This provides a general overview of what your question will be about. Don’t ask your actual question here, but more of a brief description. Don’t write “Why isn’t my theme showing up correctly? Do write: Theme Problem!
- Body: Here’s where you write your question! Note that you can upload and include images or videos in your question. As the note to the right suggests, this isn’t a place to connect with and have discussions with WordPress developers. You’re here to get an answer to your question, so keep your submissions on point.
- Tags: Include a few tags that are related to your question to make it easy for your experts to find it. Asking a question about a theme? Use both the tags “theme” and “template”.
When you’re finished, click Post Your Question.
Wait For a Reply
Stack Exchange is big on getting you the answer and less focused on pure discussion. They want you to walk away with a solution as quickly as possible, so the answers that provide the most succinct, effective advice will be provided.
Mark Answer as Accepted
If the answer worked for you, you can mark the answer as Accepted to show others who have the same question.
This is a courtesy for those who took the time to answer your question, letting them know if their response was helpful or not. It’s a good indicator to others searching Stack Exchange that the solution was the right one!
WP Buffs Webinars for WordPress Pros
Here at WP Buffs, we work alongside agencies, freelancers and WordPress professionals day in and day out. That’s why we’ve dedicated hundreds of hours to putting together one of the most robust webinar series in the WordPress space!
Whether it’s Joe Casabona teaching us about engaging our podcast audience, Jennifer Bourn giving us the inside scoop on turning strangers into hot leads or Chris Edwards giving us a Google Analytics Masterclass, these webinars are fantastic resources if you’re a WP professional and want to take your business to the next level, a little WordPress help at a time.
The WPMRR Podcast
WordPress podcasts are a great way to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in WordPress, web design, marketing, and much more.
You can’t ask questions during a podcast — unless it’s presented live — so these aren’t like traditional WordPress forums where you submit and wait for a response. All the same, WordPress podcasts can be helpful resources in answering questions that arise during your workday.
The WPMRR WordPress podcast is WP Buffs’ contribution to the fray and a way for our Head Buff, Joe, and Christie, to give out WordPress help for free every week!
We hear the same issues and questions time and time again from customers — as does my co-host Christie, from Caldera Forms — which is why I’m confident to recommend this as an indirect WordPress forum solution.
All in all, the WPMRR podcast is our way to respond to our customers’ common questions related to increasing monthly recurring revenue (or MRR, for short). Productivity hacks. Networking tips. Business-building tricks. Plus, we do some fun, spontaneous IRL episodes every once in a while!
Got to hang out with @xtiechirinos and do an in-person WPMRR podcast recording yesterday (and a second with @jason_coleman)! Plus Rock Creek Park 😎 #WordPress pic.twitter.com/48LEYdAzKH
— Joe Howard 💪🏽 (@JosephHHoward) June 7, 2019
And with guests like Chris Lema, Brad Touesnard, Rachel Cherry, and people from companies like HubSpot, GoDaddy and startups.com, it’s easy to see why it’s one of the top podcasts people tune into to get help making WordPress businesses work!
We understand where WordPress developers are coming from, so we’ve crafted each episode to tackle questions and issues that inevitably arise as you’re trying to grow your business.
If All Else Fails
Have you asked your question in every forum and still don’t have a solution to your problem?
If it’s something really advanced, it may require some specialized assistance or paid support.
Theme Support
If you’re having issues with your WordPress theme, try contacting the Theme Shop directly. They often offer support and are probably the most likely candidate to fix any problems with your theme since they know the code best.
If you’re picking a theme for your new website, be sure to read 10 Things to Consider Before Choosing a WordPress Theme For Your Website.
Plugin Support
If a specific plugin is giving you issues, get in touch with the developer who created it. Again, since they know the code, they’ll be the best option to help you fix any issues.
Most plugins have a support line available or even a support forum on WordPress.org. See what you can find there and ask away!
Want to know how to submit a Yoast XML Sitemap for SEO in WordPress? Ask in the plugin forums.
WP Buffs WordPress Help
Forums can be a really helpful resource to get answers to your toughest questions.
You can ask a for WordPress help without the pressure of being sold on a product or service and build relationships with experts in the industry at the same time. Get involved in one or a few of these WordPress support forums and get quick solutions to the WordPress challenges you face!
Then again…
If you’re having a real issue with your website, sometimes paying the experts to fix everything can be the easiest solution. WP Buffs fully manages websites for small business owners and white-label partners so you never have to peruse another forum or Facebook group again to find WP help. We handle speed optimization, security management, plugin, theme and core file updates, 4x daily backups, emergency WordPress support and much more. Hop into livechat if you’d like to chat with us directly!
Want to give your feedback or join the conversation? Add your comments 🐦 on Twitter.
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