The knowledge base has been updated with a few new pages to explain some of the newer features of AdRotate Pro.
On top of that the forums have been reorganized a bit to make them more approachable and better to use.
Check out the knowledge base here. And the forum here.
Careful: With the changes on the forum some existing links may have been broken.
Another small bugfix release and 2 new thingies.
Oh yes! Finally. People have been requesting this for some time. A wrapper function for groups! 
The wrapper is applied on group implementations and will be ignored when the group is used in a block – So be careful. But then, blocks have their own wrapper.
But what’s more. I had set out to support Pro users via tickets. Not the forum. Obviously you can post all you want on the forum. But to set Pro apart from the Free version I had decided early on that everyone would get premium support. Somewhere along the line this idea got changed and removed from the Pro Single License but recent developments made me reverse that. So everyone who bought pro can have Premium support.
This can be usage questions. More involved problems. Doesn’t matter. Just let me know. And you can do so right from your dashboard. You’ll find a new menu item under “AdRotate” where you can get in touch. This will create a ticket in my ticket system on www.ajdg.net where you get the attention you need.
You can download the new version from your account on this website. Upgrade instructions are included in the zip file in the readme.html.
[Update]
Amended changelog for AdRotate and AdRotate Pro 3.8.3.3
AdRotate Free also got an update and is pending approval by Automattic for a number of issues fixed in this release. This should be available for all free users later today or tomorrow. (Yes, I got the patch out as usual within 4 hours.)
Coming to your site soon. As you might have noticed currently (or before today) AdRotate Pro (Multi) and (Developer) Licenses had unlimited ticket support and (Single) licensees got 2 tickets on purchase. This turned out to be a little short and underused.
So the good news is that Every license will get unlimited support tickets. And what’s even better is that you can do it right from your dashboard. The concept page is being tested now to make it easy on you. Here is what it looks like right now.
This will be ready soon along with some small bugfixes and things.
Free Users this is for you. I realized that I’ve made a mistake removing the bulk renew options on the management page. In an earlier beta I’ve removed these because they didn’t work and kinda forgot to fix them. However, now there is no way to easily renew multiple adverts. As a bunch of people noticed and commented about. At some point I have promised the plugin would still be functional and fun to use. Without these that’s not true. The next release will bring back bulk renew options from the Ad Management page. Hang in there 
Tiny update to change the support links to the new system I’m launching today.
One small bugfix in AdRotate but mostly this update is aimed at updating the dashboard to no longer link to the forums but to the new ticket system instead.
[fix] Typo in query when selecting ads for groups
[change] Support links in dashboard
Since the forum was malfunctioning and was overrun by spam bots and fake users every minute or so. I decided to close the forums directly and work out a new way of supporting plugins. Having been unhappy with how the forum worked for weeks this was the last straw, so to speak.
Over the past days I’ve been looking for and testing a new system. I think I’ve found a good alternative.
Your very own support center for everything that involves my business.
http://www.ajdg.net/support/ BOOM BABY!
Ticket support. This means more personal assistance. Still free. And a knowledge base too. This will replace the current manuals and provide a more flexible way of finding information. Instead of a clumsy set of untameable HTML pages this is now all powered by WordPress and some plugins. With tags, categories and everything a knowledge base needs.
As for support. You’ll need an account, just like you did on the forum. You can ask any and all questions pertaining to my services, AdRotate and other products here and of course; use the knowledge base! I have created and expanded the FAQ a bit. I’ve made some tweaks to the current manuals which I imported into the knowledge base and will add more manuals where required.
So everyone – Please forget the dumb forums. Update your bookmark to remove the forums and add http://www.ajdg.net/support/ for future endeavors!
With the forum once again not being very successful and with that making a general mess of things I’m looking to re-invent the way I handle support.
It seems that more and more organizations use Twitter to handle the quick and easy support questions. And use a ticket or email system for the more involved questions.
I’m not too fond of Twitter as a medium but I do recognize it’s becoming (or already is) a significant force to spread information and more importantly quickly communicate about just about anything. Where a few years ago people would mainly screw around with it and have accounts for their cats and coffee machines it seems the platform as a whole has matured a bit and has a growing trend of replacing older platforms like forums and such.
As some of you know I already use Twitter to spread the word on my blog. If you don’t follow me yet, you should. Blog posts written here are pushed to Twitter so you can easily stay up to date with the latest and greatest about AdRotate and related products and services.
I believe maintaining a Facebook page is largely useless. In no small part because nobody really cares for Facebook it seems and the people actively using Facebook do so in a manner that does not suit the vision of AdRotate, me or my company. So I will not be pursuing that any further. It’s fun for sharing pictures and laugh at who farted and was dumb enough to write about it but that’s about it. Twitter somehow moved past that stage and came out a much better platform I think.
Would you favor support via Twitter over a forum? Perhaps both should exist. Should I move back to a ticket system? Although centralized systems is a thing I would much prefer there could be a benefit I’m not seeing right now.
What are your thoughts? Reach me via the comments below or DM via @ajdgsolutions.
I’ve been contemplating the best move for a while. This seems to make the most sense.
With the current forum at www.telltal.es becoming more and more obsolete i’ve decided to start a new forum on the adrotateplugin.com domain. In fact the only reason it’s still online is because of AdRotate. So starting today I’ve revised the support strategy, if you can call it that.
There are now 3 ways to find and get your answers;
1. Premium support. This uses a ticket/email system. It’s fast, private and personal. I will be involved with your questions/issues a lot more than on the forum.
2. An AdRotate Support Forum. Dedicated to AdRotate. I will be on this forum almost every day (if time permits!), answering your questions. The URL is http://forum.adrotateplugin.com. Here you’ll find the same level of support that the old forum provided.
3. The WordPress forum. I’ll be here from time to time. I’m not too fond of the limitations this board brings so this will be mainly users helping users. But I will try to read all threads once a week or so.
Note; Due to some differences with the telltal.es forum a new registration is required for http://forum.adrotateplugin.com. This is a bit of an inconvenience. But it’s a one time thing. You don’t need the telltal.es login anymore. The database, and thus your profile, will be destroyed a few weeks or months from now.
You are strongly encouraged to update your bookmarks from www.telltal.es to http://forum.adrotateplugin.com. Thank you!
With Automattic forcing their support forums on developers, plugin sites and their forums become more and more irrelevant. Telltal.es not quite working out as it should, perhaps it’s time to rethink the support strategy for AdRotate.
Telltal.es as it is now works great but with the phasing out of various projects it makes little sense to maintain it just for AdRotate.
One idea that’s floating around is to focus more on premium/pro support. Either paid or unpaid. And have the WordPress forums for casual users.
Another is to move over to the WordPress forums entirely and just endure the limitations. But that doesn’t sit well with me.
Either way, moving the current forum to www.adrotateplugin.com is not a bad idea.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
