Handling problems that you cannot fix at the time

Do you ever run into a problem or bug with your forum software or modification that you do not know how to fix yourself, but members are still complaining about it or are actively posting about it in your feedback forum? If this does happen to you, what do you do about it (I'm assuming you would ask for help via the ticket system or support forum of the software you use, but what do you do about it on your forum)? If it is a modification you may be able to disable it for the time being, but what if it's not/you can't?

 

Usually, we'll try to fix the problem ASAP, or, disable the modification if it's something me or one of the other administrators know nothing about.

 

Try to fix it yourself. At any given time, on MSN I've got a broad range of professionals in the web field. I mean I'm pretty good, but sometimes you need help.

 

What he said.

 

These are the times when I'm Googling frantically in three different windows and asking for help on forums

 

Yeah, that sounds like me. :lol:

If it's something I can disable, I will... but I can't think of any add-ons that break that I can't disable until I get help... do you have any examples?

 

Nope, not with vBulletin at least.

Maybe with another forum software or a template edit rather than an add-on.

 

I once recoded my site to use a new backup tracker that I liked. All worked fine on the test site. Then I upgraded it on the live site and suddenly I was having all these mysql errors and the site was slow as molasses. I'm self-taught mysql-wise, so I googled and googled but didn't know exactly what I was looking for. Then I started looking at table structure for a particular table and realized it didn't have an index on a field that I knew was important. So, even though I really wasn't sure exactly what these index things were, I figured it wouldn't hurt to set it up as a key. Whamo and the site was purring like a contented kitty. So yeah, I try to figure it out myself before trying to get anyone else involved.

 

Well I leave it for later if I can't attend at the moment, but I usually do it quickly if it's not that bad.

Some people need to understand that we do have 'lives' and we need to attend to them. It bugs me that people go like 'you weren't on at the time, it was your fault'

Which I have heard before.

 

Exactly. And you could be super diligent and remove hundreds of spams or fix problems before anyone has a chance to see them, but the one time you're off eating dinner and someone sees spam, you get five messages complaining about it.

 

If I can fix it at the time, and I deem it important enough, then I will. Otherwise I simply say its known about and will be fixed as and when I have time.