External Links

Excuse me @adamplayfair but the plugin author replied in a way that was not appropriate. It hit the pending queue and you never saw it but I now have to address the plugin author.

@mikeatkaizencoders I have archived your reply. If you again ask for access to a forum user’s site, be it temporary, a staging site, a test site or any site then you may lose access to these forums.

Yes, it is that serious. Please reply that you understand this here.

While I know you have the best of intentions, it’s forum policy that you not ask users for admin or server access. Users on the forums aren’t your customers, they’re your open source collaborators, and requesting that kind of access can put you and them at high risk.

If they are paying customers (such as people who bought a premium service/product from you) then by all means, direct them to your official customer support system. But in all other cases, you need to help them here on the forums.

Thankfully are other ways to get information you need:

• Ask the user to install the Health Check plugin and get the data that way.
• Ask for a link to the https://pastebin.com/ or https://gist.github.com log of the user’s web server error log.
• Ask the user to create and post a link to their phpinfo(); output.
• Walk the user through enabling WP_DEBUG and how to log that output to a file and how to share that file.
• Walk the user through basic troubleshooting steps such and disabling all other plugins, clear their cache and cookies and try again (the Health Check plugin can do this without impacting any site visitors).
• Ask the user for the step-by-step directions on how they can reproduce the problem.

You get the idea.

We know volunteer support is not easy, and this guideline can feel needlessly restrictive. It’s actually there to protect you as much as end users. Should their site be hacked or have any issues after you accessed it, you could be held legally liable for damages. In addition, it’s difficult for end users to know the difference between helpful developers and people with malicious intentions. Because of that, we rely on plugin developers and long-standing volunteers (like you) to help us and uphold this particular guideline.

When you help users here and in public, you also help the next person with the same problem. They’ll be able to read the debugging and solution and educate themselves. That’s how we get the next generation of developers.

@jdembowski I can understand.

@mikeatkaizencoders Did you read what I posted at all? That’s an honest question because you literally ignored what I posted.

I archived your new reply from 5 minutes ago. If you seek off forum contact again there is a good chance you will lose access to these forums.

@jdembowski Thanks for the moderation.

I have a question.

Sometimes, we need to understand how customer has setup the plugin. And to give quick resolution of their issue, it would be a good idea to get the access and see how things are setup and provide the solution rather than asking them to check all of possible scenarios.

Isn’t a good idea to get the access? What do you think?

@mikeatkaizencoders No, IT IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA and will get you into a lot of trouble here.

IN addition to what Jan listed, consider the liability you take on when you log into another’s site. If anything happens to the site, ever, you’re likely to get blamed. So, no, don’t do it, don’t ask for it, and don’t accept it if offered.

Thank you for you help, sorry to have stirred a problem here. Thanks for the offer of support and for your diligence in moderation. I’m please to report that external links are now all working as they should.

I updated the link to https://www.google.com/maps/place/Richmond+Holidays/@50.7396332,-1.8634175,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x4171cafbff847fa1:0xf80f210c88d3fb55!8m2!3d50.7396332!4d-1.8634175!16s%2Fg%2F11b6z_znx6?entry=ttu

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Short link expanded. Don't use those here

Glad to hear that it works for you.

If you like the plugin, please consider leaving us your review

Thanks in advance!

Side note to @adamplayfair Do not use short links in these forums, that has been abused in the past and is expanded when found. I have expanded yours.