Guide To Reporting Errors

[15501258]

Hello,
I looked but I could not find a thread with this informations so I feel as though it should be presented. Looking around the website I see people who have reported errors, and some have done this in a less desirable way. Now I am not saying that people are always doing this but I'm just going to outline a few steps in reporting and troubleshooting an error.

1. Remain calm- if you are getting an error or found a bug then stay calm and don't start automatically hating the guide.

2. Search- come to zygorguides.com and do a little bit of research and see if you can find a solution by your self. There is an advanced search i would suggest looking up one-two key words about your problem. there is also a support tab that links you to a page with links to Q&A, Support, Installation support, ect.

3. Final step- If all else fails disable Zygor and see if that is really what's causing the problem, if the problem persists then its not a Zygor guides problem. But if it stops then come to the forums and open a tread. As in step one stay calm, don't start trashing the guide. state your problem in a short statement and give examples as to what you were doing at the time of the error.

Closing- When all you do is toss out guide hate for a problem your just upsetting a lot of people. This is a great guide and has a few problems, but Zygor is only human so errors happen.

Words/Phrases to avoid:
1. This guide is crap.
2. Waste of money... ect.
3. Hate
4. Stupid
5. any vulgar or obscene language.

__________________________________________________ ________________
Edit:
Be as specific as possible.(if step is bugged list step, if guide is buggy list guide(s))
Include the version number of the guide.

Kamchaks list of extra info:
- where were you in the guide specifically?
- alliance or horde?
- what happened or didnt happen?
- is there a .lua error log you can post?
- did you update your guide to the most current version before you posted?
- are you running .net? if so, is it 2.0?
- are you running a bitdeffender or anti-virus program? Which one? did you try to disable it and then get the same error/problem?

ZToX as nice as that would be it would be irrelevant and could be against the code of conduct. not to mention not everything can know whats wrong with its self
When your sick you don't know whats wrong you go to the doctor and they may give you meds to help.

you (your guide)
go to the doctor (www.zygorguides.com)
you don't know whats wrong (your error)
and they give you meds that may help (our fix)
although you cant just "go to the doctor" and say "im sick" and nothing else... be as specific as you can be to help it along you are not screaming at them to fix you.
(well you may be but then i think that the reason your there is less important than why you are not at the loony bin.)

[dudedafool]

Great guide, sadly people will still act the same way.

But, number two should be *waste not waist.

[15501258]

Yes but the few I reach out to may be the difference in changing someone's mind about this amazing guide.

[Cartman]

The problem is that people not only don't use the search function.
The main problem are people posting in completely wrong forum sections (bug reports in the testimonial section...), open threads about the same issue as the first thread in the same section and hijack threads.
This makes it very difficult for the Zygor team to collect bugs and solutions.

Also it is helpful if exact information are included. For buggy guide steps it would be good to see at least faction, guide name and step number and quest name. This will speed up looking into it as we don't need to open a texteditor, load the guide files and search around there to get information to look up the quest at wowhead for example.

[voltec]

Well, first off... shouldn't this thread be in the General Guide Discussion area rather than the Guide Testimonials?

Secondly, although I absolutely agree with '15501258' I would have to say that the Search feature should be changed on the forum. Right now there is an 'Advanced Search' link in the top - I'd put an open search box with that link under it. So if people wanted to do a 'Basic Search', they'd just pop in what they were searching for, hit Enter and away they'd go. I'm wondering how many people take a glance for a Search box, don't see one and decide to post instead? I have to admit, the first time I searched here, I looked for the 'Basic search' and after I couldn't find that, clicked on the 'Advanced Serach' link.

And as Cartman said, putting in details helps alot when someone has a problem... Who, what, where, when, how... as many as are applicable... error code if applicable, Guide Steps, what quest, details on the toon (level, class, race, alliance/horde - yea, a little redundant... but isn't that better than "I'm in the Outlands and the guides are telling me to pick up a guide I don't see!" with no further info... lol)

But most importantly as '15501258' said, REMAIN CALM... It's a game... if you lose a few minutes or even hours or days, it will still be there when things are fixed and everything returns to normal. Your toon won't be mad and your equipment stats won't go down cause they got older... every copper piece you had before, will still be there when you get back.

[chaos5061]

Don't forget to please to include the version number of the guide. And when you go to see the version number in the updater if you see that you need to update please update your guide and see if that will fix your issue. Then if it doesn't please post your issue in the appropriate forum with the information.

[Kamchak]

Please, please, please, please (tired of typing please - you get the point)...

Give us SOME sort of information as to what the problem is you are having. "It broke! I dun paid fer it with big bucks and it no be working" is not a useful bit of information for us to help you out in any manner.
Yes, the mods and staff are here to help you. This is what we as mods signed up to do, help you. In order to do this we need you to help us with a starting area.
- where were you in the guide specifically?
- alliance or horde?
- what happened or didnt happen?
- is there a .lua error log you can post?
- did you update your guide to the most current version before you posted?
- are you running .net? if so, is it 2.0?
- are you running a bitdeffender or anti-virus program? Which one? did you try to disable it and then get the same error/problem?

We are going to ask you these questions and more to help you out anyway, so save yourself some time and gather this information in your first post.

Help us to help you, and all will be right with the world once again.

[voltec]

I vote STICKY!

STICKY, STICKY, STICKY! lol

[ZToX]

Zygor , by reading threads title I was thinking about something else, why not make error reporting addon based ? all issues could be updated when launching updater ... I don't know if this idea any good, but could not stay silent...

[ZG Support 1]

Are you saying that when someone launches the addon they would manually write in the errors or the guide would automatically know what errors they ran into?

[voltec]

Are you saying that when someone launches the addon they would manually write in the errors or the guide would automatically know what errors they ran into?

I would think that it would be very difficult at best to have the one guide report on itself - becuase if it has an error, it's a good possibility that the guide wouldn't be functioning enough to report anything. I would figure the only way for that to work would be to create a 'guide monitor', something that watched it in action and if there was a problem would know what it was doing and the status of everything up to that point... the probably with that of course is that it would take up 'clock ticks' and memory while it watched the guide... and honestly, if people just copied the info and pasted it in here along with the rest of the info, there would be no need for it anyway...

[ZToX]

moved to Suggestions

[15501258]

edited it and added somethings.