Konstantin Kovshenin

Technical Support for WordPress

Thank you for using Technical Support for WordPress.

Description

Make sure you watch this 1-minute video (in HD if you like ;)

If you’re a freelancer, a web design agency or simply a WordPress consultant, Technical Support for WordPress is a way to provide quality support to your clients. After setting up a WordPress powered website for your client, install the Technical Support plugin, which will enhance your client’s Dashboard with a new widget for submitting support tickets directly to your e-mail.

They’ll have an option to mark the issue as related to a certain topic – pick from a list, which is of course customizable within the plugin settings. The form in which messages will be sent is totally customizable and shortcode-powered (as seen from the screenshots below). The company providing support is also customizable and may include a title, logo, e-mail and company URL. The Technical Support widget looks fairly nice in the admin dashboard, which gives a slight bonus to the support company’s brand.

So, no more phonecalls, no more texts, twitter messages and whatsoever. When your client is experiencing a problem, or simply wants to request a core update, theme modification or functionality extension, all they have to do is write a few lines and click the send button (AJAX powered by the way)! You, as a Technical Support provider, can set a specific subject format for the messages to include a certain tag for certain clients, that way you can setup filters in your e-mail box and sort all your support issues into separate folders. No more junk in your Inbox ;)

Here’s a features list:

  • Easy to setup and configure
  • Customizable company name, email, logo and URL
  • Customizable subjects and messages being received
  • Customizable “related to” topic list
  • More coming up soon!

Screenshots

Download, changelog and other notes

Download link, changelog and other notes. Officially hosted in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory: Technical Support. I also like when people with WordPress.org accounts vote it up ;) thanks! Please note that the plugin is also hosted on Github thus issues and feature requests should go there and not as comments to this page. Thanks!

118 comments

  • Great plugin! This will come in handy.
    Seems that there is only one question left: What is this Frumatic secret project you are working on? ;)

  • So I install and activate the plugin and check out the Dashboard, but I got nothin' except the Technical Support config screen.. Nothing in the Widget center either. How do I add this to a page or to navigation? Need to make it actually show up. Can you help me figure out what step I'm missing? Thx.

    • Hi Rob! Yes, make sure you configure the plugin correctly. Go to your Settings – Technical Support screen, fill in the form (make sure you fill at least your support provider name, URL and e-mail), save changes, and then browse to the dashboard. The new widget will appear at the bottom. Click on the heading and drag it to the top.

      ~ K.

    • ah, okay. here i was thinking it was a form that shows up on my marketing site, but it actually shows up on my customers' WordPress install. that's great, but it would be wonderful to have it on my main site for those customers who might not remember to use the dashboard and come looking for support from the main site. Making a widget and a cforms-like code snippet to drop into a page or post would be fantastic.

  • hi – complete novice here, trying to design our own website/blog. have purchased George Plumley's "WordPress 24-Hour Trainer" book. have chosen "ocular professor" theme. trying to follow plumley, but he is now talking about templates. can't find anything that explains how a template is used w/our chosen theme.

    is there tech support that we can write to in order to have 1 basic question answered at a time? we're highly trainable!!!

    really don't know where to turn!!!! can you help point us in the right direction?
    thanks!

  • Have you considered integrating this a little closer with Zendesk?

    Their direct support of WordPress is a little lacking and this certainly looks like it will fit the bill

    • Well they have a REST and MAIL API so it shouldn't be too difficult, though I never liked Zendesk cause they're asking me for money. I don't have too much money ;)

      Maybe if they offered me a free life-time PLUS+ account with as many agents as I want… I would consider Zendeskifing it ;)

      Cheers!

    • I do agree. I have next to no funds at the moment too. Hopefully, i'll get some customers and then I will be able to.

      The reason I think I need a tool like that is to make sure none of my customers would slip through the cracks although your tool will help alot.

      Looking forward to your updates.

  • Hey – 1 issue.

    I just tried activating it on a wordpress install running on IIS but it doesnt show. WordPress reports back that it activated successfully, but no dashboard widget shows, and there is no menu option on the left to configure it.

    Any ideas?

  • Have you thought of integrating this with Basecamp or ZenDesk? As for Basecamp, I could see a message being created on a specific Basecamp project that also links to a todo item, or maybe a todo item that has a comment of containing the message request that the client sent.

    • Thinking about BaseCamp, looking through the Zendesk API, so yeah, I think that answers your question Ian ;) Not too much time on this, so we'll go slowly with the functionality and implementation. I already spoke to Adria from Zendesk, she appreciated the idea, so hopefully… ;) Cheers and thanks!

  • Fantastic plug Konstantin, just an idea, could you set up the admin in the root dashboard of wpmu so that the dashboard input panel was mirrored in every sub domain on mu blogs? As I see it at present I need to activate plug site wide and then configure each sub domain manually. This isnt a huge deal but it does allow sub domain owners to tamper with plug configuration. Go well. David

    • David, thanks! As stated below I'm no MU expert but I'll be glad to fix compatibility with MU and the plugin, so if you could provide me with a little bit more details of what I have to do and help me out with a little bit of testing, I'd be glad to ;)

  • Hi Konstantin,
    I really like your plugin as it integrates smoothly in the WP Dashboard. However I cannot get it to send emails out. Once I press send, it shows a popoup screen that sending an email out is not possible. Do you know what that can be. The Contactform on the website is working normally and it is not a spambox issue.
    Thanks

  • I'd love to get this as a page (perhaps under the dashboard menu) instead of a widget. Working with mu is a must for my use as well. Only the site admin should be able to edit the settings, but everyone else could submit requests. Thanks!

  • Great plugin design! Could you make it possible to have it on a sites main page and not require an account to submit a help ticket? It would be really nice for people who dont want user accounts created on their site.

    • Why would people that don't have accounts on the site require WordPress help ans support on that site? You're probably looking for a simple Contact form plugin ;)

  • That would be also great for an WPMU install. Just the siteadmin should be able to define in his backend the options and in all blogs the user gets the possibillity to write Supportmails. What do you think about something like this?

    Meny greetings from Jerusalem

    Philipp

    • Great idea Philipp, though I don't have much experience on MU development myself. If there's a patch you could show me perhaps I could include it in the next release.

      Cheers! ~ K

  • Hi there,

    I've just internationalized the "Technical Support" plugin.
    You may download the internationalized version + the .pot file from the link below – http://www.maorb.info/?download=technical-support…

    Use the ts.pot file to create a localized file of your local language.
    Hebrew translation is included.

    Bug fixed: Fixed problem that mail have been received from the address "ticket@domain.com" instead of the blog's current user mail address.

    Also, enlarged the height of the subjects' textarea in the setting admin menu.

    I hope it will be part of the next formal version for this plugin.

    That's it.

    • Maor, the ticket@domain.com is not a bug, actually it would be really weird if the message sent would be from that person's private e-mail address, this would throw it into the spam box on some providers as it's illegal. You're sending the email from domain.com, why would you specify it being sent from a gmail.com server?

      So ticket@domain.com is fine. The next line cleary shows a Reply-To header which tells most email clients that the reply should be written to the user's e-mail address, not the address where the mail came from.

    • Kovshenin,
      I've tried that first with the ticket@domain, but the reply-to didn't appear to be working.. So what happened is that the user of domain.com sent a ticket, which sent to the supporter from ticket@domain.com, and when trying to reply, reply sent to ticket@domain.com – which means it will never be received if that ticket email account is not defined in each client's site.

      I haven't noticed the reply-to header there, but if it's there something has to be changed so it will work fine.
      What do you say?

    • Maor, depends on the client I think. It's working fine for me in Gmail and Windows Live Mail, other than that, you should just treat it as noreply address and pass the profile e-mail in the body of the message being sent. It's still more convenient for the client and you'll still get a postmaster report if you accidentally mail ticket@domain.com so you would be able to figure out the problem. But it's against all rules to send e-mails from addresses that don't belong to you (i.e. your host). It would need some DNS configuration – SPF.

    • There was another issue with using the $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] in the From mail header, since it returned it with www and thus I got the mail from ticket @www.mydomain.com , maybe that caused. Why is the last in the $headers first line? It ends with . "
      "; Is a char needed to be sent?

      I think that the most comfortable for the one that receives the mail is to just press the reply, and not using the email that is passed into the body of the message. So should find out why the reply-to doesn't work with in all cases.

      Maor

    • ok, the is needed…
      I tried to add a line for Return-Path, but it didn't help. Reply to from outlook, still not working as expected and tried to reply to ticket@..

    • Maor, don't worry, I'll dig into this issue for the next release, thanks for your help. I'll also strip the www part if it exists, thanks for reporting ;)

      Cheers!

    • Your welcome. Will wait for the next release.
      Notice to use also the css file for the next release, since I added a class there for rtl fixing the position of the logo image.

      Best wishes.

  • Константин,замучился искать панель Плагины.Может я делаю что-то не так?…Подскажите,пожалуйста.

    • Вячеслав, вероятно вы пользуетесь wordpress.com. Плагины доступны на версии wordpress.org которую необходимо самостоятельно устанавливать.

  • Downloaded and installed your word press ticket system, but I am at a loss how to setup the widget so people can enter in tickets. The install and config worked fine, but where to I put it into widgets for people to click on link to enter a ticket for support???
    Thanks,
    Jon

  • Love the plugin and it has worked great on the sites I've used it on. Today, I encountered a problem with a WP site hosted on Bluehost. WordPress can send emails but Technical Support can't. Anyone else having this problem?

    • Florence, I'm pretty sure there are some good guides on that in Google, it shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to figure it out ;)

  • Hi there , good job , tnx about plugin , i thinking of a plugin that work on my WPMU – Buddypress site and show a Report link on every page , tnx again.
    @};- Sepehr

  • Is this only functional in the wordpress dashboard or is there a way to actually put it on our site for people to use as a support ticket system?

  • I just installed the plugin on a client site and went to send a test and an error comes up that it cannot send the email. I tried a couple of email addresses that I use regularly. I have 2.9.2 installed and am using Firefox 3.6.3. Help

  • Hi
    I'm using the update of ver 0.1.1, but as I see it appears that the reply-to is still not working :(
    I got a message from ticket @www.domain.com and trying to reply is replying to this same address, and not to the mail address that defined of the user…
    Do you appear to have a solution for that?

    Thanks,
    Maor

  • it doesn’t work with WP 2.9.2. when the plugin is activated, it doesn’t show up under settings.

  • Hi. I'm not receiving the emails after testing sending from my dashboard. I receive normal emails of new subscribers, but no tech support email.

    WP3.1 using multisite

  • Hi,

    I have recently installed this plugin. When I send a support ticket I receive the email but when I reply to it, I dont get and response?

    For testing I have it being sent to the same email as the response. Its on apple mail.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks
    Robert

  • GREAT Plugin. I am running a MultiSite WP3.0.1 setup and I noticed that under settings for every user they have access to change the Support Settings. Can it be setup so that only the SuperAdmin can modify the settings page? I installed the plugin and then did a network activate. Should I drop it into the MU plugins folder instead?

    Thanks!

  • Thanks for a great plugin, as CHris, above says, there needs to be a super admin only setting of some sort, I may be the only one that does this, but when I build a site for someone, I am the first user, ID=1, my client is the second, ID=2, and unless I change my email to theirs, I am the one sending email to myself, if only a super admin had access to the settings and if there were an option, for the one requesting support, to add an email address, and maybe even hide my support email, "This report will be sent by e-mail to", I use an email address that I do not want others to have and I would reply from a different address anyway. Is this possible? Thanks

  • Ah, I stand corrected, the plugin IS using the email from the signed in user, this part is ok. The super admin and hidden support email issues still apply, thanks

    • I just noticed that the Technical Support feature is available to everyone, subscribers included, this is not good, even contributors and up would be ok, I just found out I have opened up the SPAM floodgates with my support email being visible, that is not acceptible, please, make this hidden and change the visibility, maybe make that an option in the settings, again, only editable by the super admin, thanks

  • Hi,

    Thanks for your great plugin! I really like it and translate into Japanese. How can send you the files?

    Additionally I have a feature request. Is it possible to manage contact histories inside of WP database optionally?

  • Nice plugin. A simple request*. Can you modify the plugin so users can have it displayed in the "side" dashboard column by default? I only ask since I've removed most of the items that are there.

    *I googled it, etc, and didn't find a way to modify it myself.

  • I've translated the plugin to Bulgarian. If you're interested, mail me and I'll send you back the file with the translations (both po and mo files). :)

  • I've installed and activated Technical Support; however, it does not show up under settings for configuration. I'm on Linux using wp 3.0.5 – any ideas? – Thanks!

  • Help! I need to get off this thread, I can't find a way to do it. My comment is so old I can't even find it. How can I unsubscribe?

  • hi there,
    great plug in. why not configure the widget so that users can fill in the support form from the front end. trouble with wp dashboard is that the user experience is lost as soon as users go there from the front end. or am i missing something here?
    rgds
    chris

  • I've installed and configured this plugin and it went fine. However, it's not showing up in my Widgets menu for me to add it to my sidebar. Can you help?

    Thanks,
    Kim

    • Nevermind…I thought it was a sidebar widget, which was what I wanted. Might want to clarify that on the download page. :o) Thanks, though!

Konstantin Kovshenin