Secrets to getting customization help on dgrin quickly

[jfriend]

If you are asking for help with your customization, there are a number of things you can do to make it more likely you get quick help. I read thousands of requests for help. I respond to some of them - I don't immediately respond to others. Here are some of the things that help you get a quicker response:

1) Describe your problem clearly
2) Include links to specific pages on your site
3) Tell us what scope you want the change applied to
4) Be very specific
5) Tell us what your trying to accomplish overall
6) Google is your friend
7) Be diligent and careful when apply changes

Here's a little more description of what each of these points means:

1) Describe your problem clearly.

Provide a clear description of what's wrong or what you want help with and provide a clear description of how you want it to look (that's different than how it looks now).

If I can't understand what your issue is with a quick read of your post, I'm likely to leave the post for someone else - hoping someone else understands the issue.

When describing your problem, remember we don't know your site at all. We've never seen it before.

For example, posts like "my site is all broken now" don't tell us what you think is wrong. Most of the time, you're only going to get an answer back that says: "can you please be more specific in describing what's wrong and what you want it to look like".

2) Include links to specific pages in your site.

Every person's site is potentially different. Your previous customization and your choice of themes makes it likely that an answer to any question is unique for your site. That means that if you we don't have a link to your site, we CANNOT give an answer that we know will work on your site and further any answer we provide would just be a guess.

I hate to guess on answers. It's incredibly inefficient and it's easy for guesses to be wrong. Most of the time, I will not guess. If you don't post a link to at least one relevant page in your site, I will usually NOT answer your question (I will probably just ask for a link to your site or go on to help someone else).

The best thing to do is to put a link to your site in your dgrin signature so it's always there in every dgrin post. Then, even in a thread where you originally posted a link to your site, I don't have to go scrolling back through the thread trying to find it - it's always there in every post.

Further, if your question is about a specific page in your site (e.g. a specific gallery, category, sub-category, etc...), post a link to that specific page. I will not spend a lot of time looking through your site trying to find the page you're asking about. There are lots of people who need help, I do this as a volunteer and have limited time to help so I'd rather move on and help someone who makes it easy to help them.

3) Tell us what scope you want a change to apply to

If you're asking for a change (homepage, gallery page, category, gallery, etc...), we need to know if you want that change to apply only to one particular page or to all pages like that in your site or to all pages in your site. For example, if you are asking how to change the background in a specific category, we need to know if you want the background changed only for that one category, for all categories, for all categories and sub-categories, for all categories, sub-categories and galleries or for all pages in your site. The answer we provide is different depending upon that information.

4) Be very specific

If you want a new banner, a new color or you want a new background, give a link to the new banner graphic, give us the color code, gives us a link to a new background. You are most likely to get a perfect answer that works perfectly the first time with no additional requests for help needed if you give us all the information we need in order to give you the exact and complete answer. When image sizes are involved, I won't even attempt the answer until I see the actual image you are trying to use because the specific CSS depends upon the image and it's incredibly inefficient for me to give you part of the information and then use several more posts later in the thread to fill in the details.

5) Tell us what you're trying to accomplish overall.

I find that it's not uncommon that when someone is trying to implement a specific design, they run into an issue with one part of it. They post for help about how to do one specific thing. We get into a long conversation about it. I finally ask, what are you actually trying to accomplish overall. When they answer and I finally understand what the overall goal is, I'm able to help them find a much better way to accomplish their goal.

6) Google is your friend

Most people, I think, would rather find an answer on their own rather than ask a question and wait for an answer. Google can be an awesome tool for this. For example, yesterday there was a question about how does one pick a color code to use in CSS. A Google search for "css color code" finds a bunch of helpful links, nearly all of which provide the answer. I realize you can't solve everything on Google, but simple and general questions will find an answer on Google.

Oh, and did you know that you can use Google to search just dgrin. If you put "site:dgrin.com" (without the quotes) at the end of your Google search, then Google will just return search results on dgrin.

7) Be diligent and careful when applying changes.

Both CSS and Javascript are computer languages. Computers are dumb and thus only understand a computer language when one follows the syntax rules of that language exactly. That means that when you are copying a suggested change into your customization from a dgrin post, you have to be very diligent about applying that change. Make sure you get every piece of the change (including the first and last characters of it). Make sure you apply it in exactly the right place in your CSS or javascript. If you modify the change in any way, make sure you know how to modify it legally without introducing errors.

Subtle syntax errors can be next to impossible for the novice to figure out by themselves. Do your best not to make them.

Oh, and never, never, never use a word processor to work on your customizations. Word processors these days like to do all sorts of fancy formatting like (match left facing quotes with right facing quotes). Though the text will look nearly identical and you didn't make this change on purpose, it will NOT work after this has been done. ONLY use a plain text editor when modifying your customizations. On windows, use something like notepad, wordpad or for a really, really nice free text editor, get Notepad++.

[denisegoldberg]

Excellent post! Thanks for writing this up; I'm sure that I will be referring people here often.

--- Denise

[Andy]

Originally Posted by denisegoldberg

Excellent post! Thanks for writing this up; I'm sure that I will be referring people here often.

--- Denise

John,

thank you!

[soccermom103]

I have put the script into my botom javascript, but I can not get the
galleries page link to take me to the galleries page, it takes me to my homepage.

www.allstarspics.com

[Allen]

Originally Posted by soccermom103

I have put the script into my botom javascript, but I can not get the
galleries page link to take me to the galleries page, it takes me to my homepage.

www.allstarspics.com

You have none of the code that creates a galleries page to go to.
See this tutor.
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/2160039