[Suggestion For Mark & The Team] Restrict Access To Beta Releases

Mark,

A sensible suggestion for you.

Every time you do an update, you’ll notice this forum quickly becomes swamped with users complaining things don’t work, additional features haven’t been included, there are plugin conflicts and/or data has been lost.

However, if you look carefully, you’ll soon notice most of these comments are from our “less technically experienced” users – and in about 80% plus of cases their problems don’t relate to the actual update at all.

It’s inevitable really. Most new/inexperienced users have no development experience and don’t understand a Beta release is NOT meant for use in a live environment. They simply see a new version has been released, and immediately install it on a live site without bothering to read any of the supporting info (this then usually results in their live site becoming trashed in one way or another!)

The solution is simple. Make Beta testing releases only available to experienced PremiumPress users (e.g. those with over 250 forum posts).

There are numerous benefits to this:

1. This forum won’t get trashed with lots of irrelevant posts.
2. Experienced users are more familiar with the product and can spot problems / provide solutions quickly. This will make it easier and faster for you to fix things before rolling out the actual release – a “win win” for everyone.
3. Most experienced users understand how to make backups and use Dev sites, so there is less chance of their “live” sites getting borked.
4. Inexperienced users shouldn’t be using Beta releases anyway!
5. Adopting this approach should reduce your tech support workload by 80%, allowing them to focus on important users’ problems faster.
6. Given that v4.4 WordPress will be released 3 days after your 8.9 Beta release, this will inevitably result in far more problems/conflicts than usual.
7. It’s really easy for you to code into this forum (if User has > X posts, show beta area else hide it)

This approach would benefit everyone, and make it far easier for you to bug track/fix.

It would be good to hear whether other forum members feel this approach would make sense.

C