170 Plugin Release and Promotion

Providing Plugin Support

Given the huge WordPress user base, your plugin will be exposed to tens of thousands if not millions of potential downloads. Your plugin will typically be downloaded at least a few hundred times and with a few good reviews, if it becomes popular, you can expect tens of thousands of downloads.

With thousands of people downloading your plugin, you must be prepared to have hundreds of users coming to your web site and asking questions. Some of the questions will be highly intelligent, some would shame a monkey.

This is where a good readme.txt file helps as most users will look for answers there first, next they will visit your plugin home page. If they still cannot find an answer they may either send a direct question through your contact form (you do have a contact form?) or simply stop using the plugin (not what you want to happen).

• When you answer a support question, consider adding it to the FAQ part of the readme.txt file.
• With a very popular plugin, you may like to consider opening a support forum using the WordPress bbPress forum plugin (or one of the many others available).
• If a user reports an error in the plugin (especially a security related problem), try to fix and update the plugin as soon as possible,
• Encourage users to help each other out. People have a tendency to discover things by themselves and love to share.