Community Know-How Opening effective Troubleshooting Issues threads

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Hi Everyone,

Providing threads with little information about the issue you are experiencing makes it harder for not just WHMCS Staff to help you but other WHMCS.Community members as well.  When you don't provide a detailed overview you may end up with either a lot of questions being asked of you to determine the root cause and gather more information or no answer to your question at all.  This can be frustrating and lead to you having a negative experience on the Community.

The purpose of this thread is to help other WHMCS.Community Members help you quickly and effectively. 

1. Do a quick search

WHMCS.Community has a wealth of information that has been gathered in the last few years that means there might already be an answer to your question. Before posting, take a moment to do a quick search in the top right-hand corner of the community.

Other than search WHMCS has some other great resources to these include our Documentation , Guides & Tutorials & our Developer Documentation to name a few.

2. Thread Title - Make it relevant

The thread title is the first thing people see when browsing the community, this is your chance to provide a quick snapshot of the issue, so a subject matter expert can jump in and help you

Thread titles like the below are more useful:

• Broken payment gateway page after installing 3rd party module.
• How do I set my configuration.php file to read-only
• clientarea.php returns error 500
• Setup > Products > Domain Registrars broken with PHP 7

Than thread titles like these:

• Payment Gateway Broken
• Permissions to Read Only
• Error 500
• Domain Registrars broke

3. Make use of tags - Include your version

Hot Tip: Put the WHMCS version number you are using as a tag e.g 7.3.1 

Tags are just as important as the title these are used as filters and are another way to quickly and easily determine what the thread is about. 

Tags like Domain Registrars, eNom, OpenSRS, Payment Gateways, eWAY, PayPal, Stripe, Client Area, Invoices are all useful tags remember to separate your tags with commas.

Putting useful tags is one way you can help people understand what you need help with and for people who know that functionality to help you quickly

If you'd like to learn more about tags check out 

 

4. Detail & Reproduction Steps

• Detail is of paramount importance, the more detail you provide the better include information such as:
  • The error messages you are receiving on screen, in module logs, or server logs, remember to say which log it's in
    • Note: For users with admin panel access enable display errors under Setup > General Settings > Other > Display Errors,  If you cant access your admin area add the following line to the end of your configuration.php file
      $display_errors = true;
  • Provide detailed reproduction steps
    • The action you where taking
    • The screen  you where on
    • The error/output you received
    • The output server/module/gateway logs showing
    • What module/server/gateway you are using
    • What you expected to happen
    • What actually happened
    • What you have done to try and resolve the issue
  • Tell us about your environment - everyone has a slightly different setup, remember to include things such as 
    • Your WHMCS Version number
    • Your PHP version & IonCube Loader
    • Your PHP Memory & Timeout Limits (when relevant)
    • Are you running Linux, Windows, Mac? What Distro
  • If your issue is with a template or a template display issue
    • Try the default Six theme
      • To do this, use an URL such as http://www.yourdomain.com/whmcs/?systpl=six
    • Try the default Standard_Cart  theme
      • To do this, use an URL such as http://www.yourdomain.com/whmcs/?carttpl=Standard_Cart
    Anything else that you think is relevant

5. Use the CODE box when pasting code or log outputs

When pasting any code into a thread remember to click the code icon box first it's in your editor toolbar at the top of the thread.  We recommend using the code box when pasting logs as well.

6. Remove personal information

This might sound obvious but you'd be surprised how often people forget!  Please remember to remove/hide/blur any personally identifiable information such as Usernames, Emails, Passwords & IPs from text logs & images.  Posting this information on the community is a security risk.  If you forget to do it or you come across any personal information please use the Report Post button in the top right to alert our moderation team to it.

7. Seeking support elsewhere?

Have you already opened a ticket?  Remember to include your Ticket ID this will allow our WHMCS.Community Staff to check your ticket and let the support team know that you've got a thread on the community as well.

8. Problem solved?  Tell us how

Remember, when your problem is solved please take the time to let us know in the thread, provide details on how it was solved and anything relevant this will help future community users experiencing a similar issue get the answer quickly!

That's it!

Thanks for reading! That's all we have for now we hope this helps you get the most out of the Troubleshooting Issues board Have I missed something out?  Ideas for how to make threads even more useful? Let me know in the Feedback Thread linked below!