gearhead Congratulations to Kian our new Gearhead

[WHMCS ChrisD]

Hi everyone,

It's been quite some time since we added a new member to our Gearhead Program, A GearHead is a member of the community who is a champion of the WHMCS software. A GearHead is hand-picked by the WHMCS.Community Staff. We look for individuals who are long-standing activists in the community, courteous to other members, always providing technical insight and advice, and generally helping to make our forums a better place to learn, troubleshoot, and advance.

With that in mind we're pleased to add @Kian to the GearHead ranks! A active community member for a number of years Kian provides a range of helpful responses to members right across the WHMCS.Community Platform.

We look forward to seeing @Kian's future contributions to the platform alongside our current Gearheads.

[brian!]

On 24/05/2019 at 11:21, WHMCS ChrisD said:

With that in mind we're pleased to add @Kian to the GearHead ranks! A active community member for a number of years Kian provides a range of helpful responses to members right across the WHMCS.Community Platform.

congratulations to @Kian 🙂

Edited May 30, 2019 by brian!
Removed part of content that is not relevent

[Jafar Muhammed]

Yo! Congratulations @Kian 👏

@brian!, please don't leave us 🙏, I thought that you were (only) the One. 

[WHMCS ChrisD]

I'm sorry to see you go @brian! best of luck with your future work, you will be missed around here by myself and other WHMCS.Community Members

[Remitur]

Best congratulations to @Kian!!!!!           

Disappointment about the @brian! leaving... 

[WHMCS John]

Congrats @Kian. Glad to have you as a Gearhead!

[wsa]

Congrats @Kian

[wp4all]

Congrats @Kian

@brian! I'm sad and I can understand it hope you'll come back one day.

Greetings Christian

[Kian]

I wanted to mention all of you to say "Thanks" but every time I use [@]nickname I can no longer type 🤣 Guess I'm dumb. Anyway I wasn't expecting that 😍 thanks!

Sadly what brian said left me speechless. I hope he replies to my PM.

 

[brian!]

1 hour ago, Jafar Muhammed said:

@brian!, please don't leave us 🙏, I thought that you were (only) the One. 

effectively, I was - sentq has been absent from posting for a long while, and Kian was about the only other poster who could have been promoted to Gearhead - in practice, for technical questions that WHMCS staff consider customisation (and hence won't touch with a bargepole), there has recently only been Kian, steven99 and myself to reply to the posters.

frankly, there haven't been nearly enough people replying here over the last few years and this place is far too dependent on too few posters getting involved... perhaps by my taking a step back for a while, it will encourage others to contribute more... it was becoming an increasing burden for me and ceasing to be as much fun as it once was - plus, in my opinion, there was far more of a community spirit years ago here than there is now and that probably contributed to that feeling too.

coming back from a 3 week break from here and finding that out of the 200+ threads posted, half of them had seemingly gone unanswered or not answered correctly, told me everything I needed to know about the "community" - i'm missing for 3/4 of the month and i'm still going to get the most reaction points of anyone for the month by a mile... absolutely ridiculous.

so all i'm doing is taking a break from openly replying to threads and so others can pick up the slack now... or leave the threads unanswered if they prefer to... that's their choice.

maybe I should have done what other gearheads have done over the years and just faded into the background for a while, and not be honest with what I intend to do.. but I thought if I did that, others would be concerned with my absence... turns out, honesty is not the best policy! 🙄

3 hours ago, WHMCS ChrisD said:

I'm sorry to see you go @brian! best of luck with your future work, you will be missed around here by myself and other WHMCS.Community Members

i'm not going anywhere - i'm just doing what 99.9% of the community does (including nearly all the experienced members) and not replying publicly to questions (for a while at least) - I would hope that most users would agree that i'm entitled to have such a break after years of uninterrupted service!

i'm still likely to post comments (some even humorous!), perhaps even the occasional link if a question has already been answered by a thread, but i'm not going to spend endless hours banging out hooks for no reward - in fact, one other "developer" here has frequently been taking my posted code here and turning them into commercial addons - I can do that myself from now on if I choose to.

so as I say, i'll still be here, just working/lurking in the background for a while and spending more time on development projects and my businesses - my door is always open for anyone to ask me anything (within reason!). 🚪

1 hour ago, wp4all said:

@brian! I'm sad and I can understand it hope you'll come back one day.

don't be sad Christian, i'm not and i've no regrets (* except the need for my apology to Kian below) of my decision - i've been looking forward to June for a while and taking a break to do other things on my terms, not other peoples! 🙂

i'd already posted that I wasn't going to be here the first week of June anyway (or next Monday either)...

having now seemingly been immediately moved to L2 membership (boy if they could release hotfixes/updates as quickly as they did that, it would be one hell of a company to support! lol), I lose the option to edit posts - that would make posting technical replies take far too long to do (as i'd have to double-check and proof read before posting), so unless I am returned to the Gearhead ranks pretty soon, there's no chance of me posting answers again here.... actually, I can see why others might not reply to those threads now as they'd be an absolute pain to do without editing options.

perhaps the holiday can start earlier - win-win!! 😎

14 minutes ago, Kian said:

I wanted to mention all of you to say "Thanks" but every time I use [@]nickname I can no longer type 🤣 Guess I'm dumb. Anyway I wasn't expecting that 😍 thanks!

oh that can be annoying when it occurs and it seemingly does it randomly - some days it works fine, other days you just get stuck inside the mention unable to get out.... never figured out the cause, so I found that it's usually just easier not to use the mention option.

27 minutes ago, Kian said:

Sadly what brian said left me speechless.

for the avoidance of doubt, my announcement was not related, or a reaction to, Kian being made a gearhead in any way - I had intended to make the announcement next Friday before going on holiday, but I felt Chris' post made it more apt to mention it in passing today... sadly, my post has seemingly overshadowed the initial announcement and for that, I apologise to Kian as that wasn't my intention at all.

38 minutes ago, Kian said:

I hope he replies to my PM.

I will indeed - the nice thing about PMs is that I can say whatever I want in them! 🤐

PM reply sent. 📨

[Jafar Muhammed]

43 minutes ago, brian! said:

in fact, one other "developer" here has frequently been taking my posted code here and turning them into commercial addons

Aghh, I am speechless here. 😠

[Kian]

2 hours ago, brian! said:

my post has seemingly overshadowed the initial announcement and for that, I apologise to Kian as that wasn't my intention at all.

Naaah you didn't and anyway I don't care 🤣 No problem at all. I read your PM multiple times. You're amazing 👍

2 hours ago, brian! said:

I lose the option to edit posts

So that means I can edit my own posts. I didn't know that! It seems that I can also hide my own replies.

[brian!]

12 hours ago, Kian said:

I read your PM multiple times. You're amazing 👍

thank you, my friend.

12 hours ago, Kian said:

So that means I can edit my own posts. I didn't know that!

think of it as a bonus feature of being a GearHead! 🙂

as I said previously, it's essential when posting serious lengthy code to be able to go back and edit it... otherwise, you'll end up with a thread of variations/fixes which gets confusing for everyone... and i've seen a few of them here over the years!

12 hours ago, Kian said:

It seems that I can also hide my own replies.

and if you start a thread yourself, you can hide the entire thread too (even if others have replied) - the temptation is strong, so use it wisely.

[brian!]

on the topic of GearHeads going forward and if anyone wants my opinion (even if they don't, i'm going to give it!), in an ideal world, they should really be looking at having 4 GearHeads here - because if there were 4, then you have some redundancy built in so that if one goes missing (for whatever reason), the other 3 can cover the replies... at an absolute minimum, you need 2 if they are both active... having just 1 (whoever it is) is not viable long-term... of course, other fringe users can (and should) reply to threads too.. and personally, i'd keep replies from WHMCS support staff down to a minimum (except for things they have responsibility for. e.g bugs, announcements etc)... the more they post, the more this place can feel like an offshoot of the support dept... and what I liked about this place is that it wasn't like that! though in the absence of finding suitable gearheads (not everyone accepts the position when it's offered I understand lol!), staff involvement may be a necessary evil to cover the gaps.

... and of those 4 GH, they need to have a wide spread of knowledge between them - no point having 4 TPD, or four who know nothing about WHMCS coding - there needs to be a good mix so that the various question areas are covered.

sadly, I can't think of four who would qualify.. can think of 3 (at their peak) who could, but then I draw a blank on the 4th... anyway, not my problem. ☺️

[ThemeMetro]

 Congratulations @Kian 

[mfoland]

Congrats @Kian