Skip to content

VIP Support

WordPress VIP uses the Zendesk ticketing system to support customers with technical issues, and to answer questions related to working with the VIP Platform’s infrastructure.

Contacting VIP Support

Contact VIP’s Support team by creating a Zendesk Support ticket using one of the following methods:

  • Zendesk: Log in to WordPress VIP Zendesk portal (access is provided to customers after a kickoff call).
  • VIP Dashboard: Select the button labeled “Help Center” located in the upper-right corner of the VIP Dashboard, then select the tab labeled “Support“.
  • WordPress Admin dashboard: Select “VIP” from the lefthand navigation menu of a site’s WordPress Admin dashboard. Complete the fields in the form titled “Contact WordPress VIP Support” and select the button labeled “Send Request“.

Submitting a ticket

Note

The Urgent priority should be used sparingly for true emergencies such as production outages, time-sensitive security concerns, and workflow-blocking situations where a production site is not functioning at all.

Tickets marked as Urgent will immediately alert and interrupt the Support team.

Create a new ticket for each individual request. This allows the Support team to route questions effectively and helps avoid confusion when multiple issues and resolutions are discussed in one ticket.

  • When creating a ticket, select the appropriate priority level: Low, Normal, High, or Urgent.
    Tickets submitted with Urgent priority will alert the entire Support team, so use this priority level sparingly. Urgent priority is reserved for true emergencies like outages, time-sensitive security concerns, and workflow-blocking situations where a site is not functioning at all.
  • Existing Support tickets can be accessed in the Zendesk portal.
  • Other users can be added to a ticket by including their email address in the cc field of the original Support request or to any subsequent responses.
  • Customers who are members of more than one organization should select an organization in the Zendesk portal dropdown to associate a new Support request with the correct account. 
  • If a ticket is created for an issue with a sense of urgency, remain available after the ticket is submitted. Be able to quickly respond if the Support team has questions or if clarifications are needed. If the ticket submitter is not available to respond for any period of time, they should cc one or more colleagues who will be able to respond instead.

Information to include in a ticket

Our Support team needs to fully understand the scope, nature, and context of a request in order to troubleshoot and investigate in an efficient and effective manner. If the initial request in a ticket does not provide sufficient information, the amount of time required to communicate and resolve the issue will increase.

When creating a Support ticket, provide as many of the details listed below as possible that are relevant to the issue.

Essential information

It is unlikely that the VIP Support team will be able to proceed with an investigation without this information:

  • The domain name(s) that correspond to the VIP Platform environment affected.
  • Exact URLs affected: These could be front-end URLs, WordPress admin URLs, or both.
  • Steps to replicate the issue – this is very important so that Support can start analyzing the problem right away.
  • Description of issue + supporting screenshots, error messages, and support details if applicable.
  • What is the expected behavior?
  • How does the actual behavior differ from the expectation?
  • Timings of issue occurrence.
  • Impact/number of users affected?

Helpful information for debugging reported issues

Take time to investigate the issue and collect the following information:

  • What steps have been taken to investigate this issue so far?
  • What has been determined from looking at New Relic?
  • What has been determined from looking at Query Monitor?
  • What can be seen by using a browser’s development tools? Are there browser errors? What about the response headers?
  • Is the site down for everyone, or just one person?
  • Have advertisements or other third-party content been identified as possible sources of the problem?
  • Have developers on the team replicated this issue on non-production environments?

Additional information

  • On which network are the affected users? (e.g. office, home, mobile)
  • On which browser(s) is the issue appearing?
  • If one user is affected, what is the user’s source IP
  • If only a few users (less than 5) are affected, what are the WordPress usernames of the affected users?
  • Have there been recent deployments?
  • Have there been network changes on the customer side? (e.g. DNS if applicable or internal network changes)
  • Provide a traceroute and HTTP headers.
  • Provide a HAR file for failing or problematic requests.
  • Provide a screen share or videos demonstrating the issue.
  • If a site has a reverse proxy such as Akamai, can the issue be reproduced when requests bypass the reverse proxy and are sent directly to the Automattic Anycast IP address by editing the local hosts file
  • If a decoupled architecture is used, has it been determined that the front-end application is not causing the issue?
  • Have there been any caching changes? (e.g., modifications to cache-control headers)

The VIP Zendesk ticket system can be used for any and all questions, not just when problems occur. Tickets can be submitted to the Support team even for basic questions.

Assume that the Support team might ask questions such as, “Why?” or “What problem are you trying to solve?” to understand a request better. The more context and detail that can be provided in the initial request (or reference to a previous ticket), the easier it will be for the Support team to start with answers, solutions, and support.

Last updated: February 29, 2024

Relevant to

  • Node.js
  • WordPress