ocPortal Tutorial: Support options
Getting support, making requests, reporting bugs, registration, and paid consultancy
This tutorial will lay out the support options available to ocPortal users.Table of contents
Introduction
With ocPortal, you can a very advanced website 'out of the box', that you may start adding content to after only setting a few options and filling in a few 'blanks'. The system is extremely flexible and configurable, so as to make sites highly personal: however, this level of customisation requires an understanding of the various concepts of the system, as described in our tutorials, and users should not expect to be able to reshape the system themselves without first gaining such as understanding.This is an inevitable situation: it is impossible, literally, to make a system that is as flexible as ocPortal users demand, without creating many technologies for different areas of the system, or as most competing products expect, with reprogramming of the product itself at a source-code level. The paradox is, the easier-to-use we make customisation, via the addition of new configuration interfaces and wizards, the more complex we make it, due to the need to learn the process of using these interfaces, and the more we "second-guess" what our users intend to do. We work hard to design our software in such a way that a good middle-ground is reached between provisions for configuration by extra interfaces, and simplicity of design.
A good example of a product that is similar to ocPortal in this regard is a car:
Cars can be easily configured, by changing the inbuilt radio, adding child-seats, roof-racks, and so on. They can also be maintained by the owner, if they choose to learn the appropriate car maintenance skills. Internally, cars are designed in a very component-based way, such that things can be easily changed around by those with the knowledge of the system - however, it takes time to develop this knowledge. Due to all that needs to be known to fully customise and maintain a complex product like a car, most non-technical users will pay mechanics to do it for them. However, there is nothing stopping most doing it themselves if they have the will, and unlike a car, ocPortal comes with a wide range of options built in, as well as detailed documentation.
Getting support
All ocPortal users may use our forum resources for asking for support from other users. ocProducts staff may also reply, at their own discretion.Reporting bugs
ocProducts has been renowned for tackling bug reports with high speed.If you have found a bug, please first make sure you are running the latest version, then please contact us detailing the problem with as much appropriate detail that you can reasonably think of, in well phrased English.
Such information may include:
- your ocPortal version
- a stack-trace, if ocPortal gives one
- the exact error message
- any prior actions that might have led to this bug (for example, if you un-installed a module and now get error messages that look like they may be related to it)
- situational details (for example, if you added news, and it was added as blank, did you get a Comcode error before it, or did you leave a field blank?)
- any related information, such as module names, in the correct case, please (e.g. Don't refer to the 'GALLERIES' page instead of the 'galleries' page, because it may mislead us to thinking that a template or language string was in error - as they are in upper case)
- and anything else you think could help. Fixing bugs is like detective work: clues are vital.
ocPortal comes with an automatic bug reporting mechanism, that is enabled by default but may be disabled during installation and at any time in the site configuration. We prefer that users leave this option enabled, as it allows us to fix bugs that do not get reported (which is probably a high percentage). This system logs and emails us any bugs you may encounter.
If you can't remember a PHP or ocPortal-critical error message, you may be able to find it in your error log (located in the Admin Zone). The error log shows all non-user-errors that have occurred on your site.
Please do not report errors to ocProducts that are related to third-party addons/modifications.
Feedback/Making requests
We very much welcome all feature requests for our product, although regretfully we may not always be able to respond directly.Please note that we reserve the right to use our own judgement for what features to implement and also to decide, and break, our own schedules. You should not expect a reply to a feature request, however we do read and take each and every one seriously. If a feature is required for your website, you may wish to consider asking if we can get it coded for you on a direct commercial basis.
For more information, please see our: