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I'm trying to be a "good boy" and ask questions on the site where they belong. However lately I encountered several cases where I wasn't sure which site to choose: StackOverflow, ServerFault, SuperUser or Doctype.

Specifically, these are questions about WordPress hosted blogs. The reason it's tricky is because the choice of site depends on the answer, but I don't know the answer until I ask my question... To clarify, the answer to my question may be:

  1. A tweak in the PHP source code (StackOverflow)
  2. A request to my hosting provider (ServerFault, or maybe SuperUser)
  3. A configuration tweak (SuperUser)
  4. A CSS fix (Doctype)

I am using my best judgement, and have asked questions on most of the sites. Here are several examples.

However, now I have a question and I really don't know where to ask it: the question is how I can download a complete theme after I made code changes to it on the server, so that I can deploy that exact theme on another blog, without downloading file-by-file. I really don't know where the solution will come from...

What do you think? What is the best practice for asking WordPress related questions?

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  • What about now that we have Web Apps and Web Masters? Can we change now?
    – Casebash
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 0:13
  • exactly i want to know the same answer for this question. where can i ask wordpress related questions???
    – manish goyal
    Commented Apr 27, 2013 at 6:57

3 Answers 3

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It does depend on the type of question, as some might be more programming specific than others. However, if you are in doubt, I would suggest that you start with SuperUser, as you are asking for answers to questions you have using a third party software/service, from others that use that same software/service.

Update:

There is a specific Stack Exchange site dedicated to WordPress related questions: wordpress.stackexchange.com

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Am I the only one who thinks wordpress.org? They have forums for the base install and some plugins have forums and mailing lists. If that fails, there's the wordpress plugin forum and e-mailing the author; besides all the usual googling you do about your problem before asking.

There are a ton of open source apps - phpBB, wordpress, and so on, and they all have evolved their own support channels. These types of questions: "I can't get plugin X of Semi-Obscure App Y working" tend to interest a very few people, and grow the size of the active and new pages to the point where for 95% of the people the signal to noise ratio is way low. (Or at least lower than it used to be 4-5 months ago)

I'm not picking on you, and I do think there are some wordpress or phpBB related questions that are worth putting on Stackoverflow, but not the majority of them. Your two questions are worthwhile, because you abstract them very far away from wordpress. I think that's the key. When you abstract the problem far enough away where it's a question you don't need any specialized knowledge about, it becomes obvious which site to post it on.

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    @Tom: the WordPress forums are not very helpful, I tried them all for each of my questions. Usually you see a question, maybe one non-helpful answer, and the topic is closed. I believe the StackOverflow family of sites to be better suited for these questions. I always try to abstract the most while writing questions, but WordPress is WordPress... +1 because it's a valid option, but IMHO (and very sadly so) - not a very good one.
    – Roee Adler
    Commented Aug 30, 2009 at 16:39
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I think you've got a solid theory about where to ask which questions. If it's theme-modification (coding), then go to SO. As for downloading a theme, this sounds more like a superuser question. It's frustrating though, because for some reason it seems as though there's another option missing, but since I can't place my finger on it, superuser because the default.

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  • Superuser "becomes" the default? :)
    – Roee Adler
    Commented Aug 30, 2009 at 14:05
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    Unfortunately, yes. Superuser is viewed (not by me, but apparently by the majority) as the trashbin for all questions that don't fit on SF/SO/MSO.
    – Sampson
    Commented Aug 30, 2009 at 16:38
  • @Jonathan: I was referring to what I think is a typo in your answer's last words ("superuser because the default") - just to make sure I'm getting you correctly...
    – Roee Adler
    Commented Aug 30, 2009 at 20:22

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