Theme Support Situations

Hi All,

I have a question regarding theme support. I am a new theme author here on TF and so far have had a very positive experience.

I try my best to provide the right support and help people as much as I can. However, what happens if by some chance a theme author cannot provide support for a period of time? (e.g. moving, travelling, illness etc.). Should they try and find a partner to work with? Should they remove the theme from the marketplace temporarily until they are able to provide support again?

What would be your suggestions if you were put in a situation where you were unable to provide theme support for a period of time for your files?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts

Cheers.

You should state that you’ll be away and won’t be able to provide support for the duration that you will be gone. There may be some authors here who can afford to pay someone to offer support while they’re gone, but that’s probably only the case with some of the top few authors.

You will most likely get less sales if you aren’t around to offer support. My partner (who offers support) has had small durations in which he couldn’t offer support, and our sales dropped during those times.

if you are talking about Christmas… create a custom auto reply stating happy holidays and all that and tell the custom you will get back after the holidays .

You could do what the other ones told you above, or you just could create a full Documentation for the themes you’re creating. That would releases you from a lot of pressure and could possibly help your client.

Ferdilicios said
You could do what the other ones told you above, or you just could create a full Documentation for the themes you’re creating. That would releases you from a lot of pressure and could possibly help your client.

It is required to do documentation, and usually authors make the best documentation they can, as it lowers the amount of support they have to do.

Monkify said

Ferdilicios said
You could do what the other ones told you above, or you just could create a full Documentation for the themes you’re creating. That would releases you from a lot of pressure and could possibly help your client.

It is required to do documentation, and usually authors make the best documentation they can, as it lowers the amount of support they have to do.

Not to mention, many buyers choose to contact the author for support first and skip reading the documentation. Of course this is rather frustrating as authors, but the point is you’re always going to get support requests no matter how good your documentation is.

This is going to sound mean but us authors dont actually have to provide support at all, this is why it varies as to how much we give.

Personally, i see my buyers as the lifeblood and so I do genuinely try and help them, and I’ll always reply to messages but don’t go stressing if you aren’t around or if you can’t help with a particular mod to the theme – for $10-30 they can’t expect the world.

jeffeatworld said
This is going to sound mean but us authors dont actually have to provide support at all, this is why it varies as to how much we give. Personally, i see my buyers as the lifeblood and so I do genuinely try and help them, and I’ll always reply to messages but don’t go stressing if you aren’t around or if you can’t help with a particular mod to the theme – for $10-30 they can’t expect the world.

+1 (and thanks for you reponse on my thread jeff – appericiate that!)

Great replies. Thanks a lot for your help.

I guess I don’t want to leave people in the dark after purchasing a theme, so I will definitely find a way to make sure this doesn’t happen. After reading Bluz’s thread though, I do agree some people can take things too far and expect the author to work for them for free.

I think I may end up looking for a developer to work with for 2011. I will start a thread to see if anyone is interested or available.

Thanks guys and merry christmas.