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I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Hi,
I’m a big Txp fan. I have a VC account at TextDrive. I have enough knowledge and understanding to create basic sites and I like to think of ways of improving my sites and getting more out of them. I recognise that Txp is open source and I am extremely grateful for the people that write plug-ins and templates and make them freely available. I really appreciate all the help that everyone offers in this forum free of charge – that goes for TextBook, kursor.com, Textpattern Resources and all.
BUT
Txp is complicated and getting more complicated every day. I need to concentrate on the content of my sites, not spend hours reading documents, comments, code and terminology that only the people who already know it can understand in the first place. I need to be able to talk to someone who can show me how to fix something that is most likely obvious to them and hair-tearingly frustrating to me.
Many of you contributing to this forum have put in thousands of hours gaining the knowledge you have – isn’t it about time some of you got paid for sharing it? I can’t afford to spend even tens of hours learning how to get the most out of Txp. Can we have a database of names of people who are ready and willing to be paid to take phone calls and help out with coding, CSS and so on? If it was linked to this forum, we could even see who might be online and contact them before we are even close to the ‘throwing-laptop-off-high-building’ stage. There could be a ‘was this person helpful to you?’ rating system or a list of specialisations etc. At the very least this forum could put people together by email – maybe an extra ‘I’m desperate” topic could be used just for this?
Help! (please).
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Could you specify what kind of frustration preceded the “laptop vs. gravity” scene? Maybe one can offer help if the problem is described more precise?
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Thanks for the offer – and sorry I’m late responding, but this highlights my problem. I have probably about five main errors of coding or misunderstanding on a new site I’m putting up. I also have about ten other matters that go along the lines of ‘how do I go about doing this?’, ‘is it possible to do that?’, ‘see that bit there, can I do something similar with this section on that page?’, ‘how do I get this to centre?’, ‘is there a better way of..?’, ‘what program do I use to redesign that bit?’ etc.
If I had a spare hour (which I don’t until Friday) I’m pretty sure I might be able to solve one of these problems by searching the forum and textbook and trying various guesses out or even trying to describe the problem in sufficient detail so you could understand it and help me out (I really do appreciate this free help – please don’t think I’m ungrateful).
But if I had an hour on the phone with a TextPattern expert going through the code and structure of my site, I’m pretty sure I’d nail about 80% of my problems there and then. One conversation or hours of typing and searching?
I know what I need – am I the only one out here who does?
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
I’m game. Let’s do it.
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Well I find the best way to deal with problems isn’t by telephone, it’s by you giving me a list of the problems and a login to your admin. I then drop in, have a look around, fix this, that or the other, logout, email you with a list of what I’ve done and what it fixed then remind you that you owe me $x.xx . I’ve offered this to you but you need to go through the right channels, namely through my signature.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Sounds reasonable, just one correction: It should read “$xxx.xx” ;-)
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Oh sorry wet, did I sound a bit cheap there? ;)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Ah, maybe you were accounting for the fun you’d have…
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Well I have to split my income 4 ways so I was probably accurate the first time. :-)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
Sorry, Stuart – I know you have replied to my email by now – this original thread was posted before I received your reply. I will be getting back to you asap to see if we can figure out something that works for us both – but I really do need to talk to someone and am happy to pay for that service. I have a panic job on at the moment so all things texturally patterned have had to take a back seat.
Interestingly, I seem to be the only one that needs to talk to someone in order to learn – I must be getting old.
(PS mrdale, thanks very much; the site design I’m trying to adapt was originally ported by Stuart so it makes sense for me to try to talk to him first, but if he isn’t interested in ‘talking me through it’ perhaps I’ll try to contact you if that’s OK? ).
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Re: I want to pay for troubleshooting help
No problem yusoshi. When you are ready. ;)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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