Misc

We want to wish Happy Holidays and a joyous New Year to all members of the Solostream Community.

In observance of the holidays, we will be closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  In addition, we will be operating with a limited support team through the end of the year.

Please be patient in awaiting support responses during this period as we will be spending time with our families.

Warm wishes,  The Solostream Team

We have received a number of inquiries lately about browser display problems like:

My site displays perfectly in Firefox but when I open it in Internet Explorer 7 it is all scrambled. How can I resolve this problem?

First and foremost, we want to let you know that we make every effort possible to quality check our templates before they are distributed for sale. We test them in different browsers and operating systems to ensure that they display properly.

You can test this for yourself by going to the many demo sites that we host and view them in different browsers for yourself:

WP-Vybe - http://www.wp-vybe.com
WP-Magazine - http://www.wp-magazine.com
Zeke 1.0 + Widgets - http://www.themes.solostream.com

If the demo site displays properly and your site doesn’t in the same browser, the most likely causes are:

1. Plugin Incompatibility - You have incorporated a plugin to your site that has created a compatibility problem. It’s like mixing ice cream and steak. Both of them can be very good by themselves but they are not the type of ingredients you want to mix on your plate at one time.

To resolve this situation, we recommend you deactivate the plugins one by one until you isolate the specific plugin that is causing the problem.

2. You may have mistakenly modified the code - This can be a true pain in the neck since there are so many places to look within the site’s code.

Our best advice in these moments is to try the following tools:

- Go to http://validator.w3.org/ to validate the HTML and check for errors
- Go to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ to validate the CSS and check for errors

We’ve all heard of Spring cleaning sessions. Well, for whatever reason, Solostream customers have created an equivalent phenomena right now — Fall Update/Upgrade/New Plugin season. Perhaps this is being triggered by the soon-to-be-released WordPress 2.7.

The rash of activity has triggered an important conversation with our team that we need to share with you. One of the most painful (and frustrating) experiences in working with technology is the moment of a major crash when installing an update or the unintended disruption of a feature or service when a new plugin is installed on a site.

The best technology users we know are all paranoid. They expect and therefore plan for the worst to the fullest extent possible. It is their preparation that saves them from setting off a bad situation or makes it easy to quickly resolve a sticky situation.

We encourage all Solostream customers to follow a few basic steps when working on a project for their site.

1. Carefully research the project you want to implement. The Internet offers tons of information and helpful people who have already implemented your type of project. Take advantage of this knowledge!

2. Whenever possible, do not perform work on a live site. Using a back up site will only impact yourself and anyone else who is viewing your test efforts.

3. Become familiar with how to revert your site in WordPress in case you encounter a problem within an update or plugin. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress if you know how to do this before you really need it.

Implement these steps and you’ll become the confident high wire acrobat with a safety net instead of one who goes splat and gets carted away by the clowns.

Yes, you read the title correctly. Believe it or not, the wait is over and the Solostream team has finally launched a forum that all members of our community may use to post support questions, issues, and anything else (General Discussion). Why did it take so long? Well, our security standards had to be met and we wanted to ensure that there is a support community available. SMF exceeded our expectations.

All WordPress and Theme Tutorials from www.solostream.com, www.wp-vybe.com, and www.wp-magazine.com have been carried over. It is now possible to easily find what you’re looking for in the posts. And, if something you need answered isn’t there, you can just create a new topic under the board.

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From inside Solostream, the addition of the new members to the team has gone off without a hitch.  Michael Pollock has provided strong guidance for maintaining the courteous and professional service.

As I considered the comments from recent posts about the significance of maintaining a high level of customer support, I realized that we can “talk the talk” very easily.  However, it is only when you “walk the walk” and let your actions speak for you that you demonstrate true commitment.

I thought our customers and prospective customers would find it interesting to see some of the feedback we have received since Alistair Barnett and I joined Solostream this month.

First there is a complete post from Randall Miller about using WP-Vybe on his site at http://randallhmiller.com/welcome-to-randallhmillercom/.  Thanks Randall.

Here are a few more comments that have been sent to us recently:

I recently purchased another premium theme and I have been very frustrated with how much work/code is required to get it to look or work anything like the demo site. I’ve basically given up because I don’t want to hire someone to make it work and their support is lacking.  I’ve been all thru your demo site, tutorials and Q&A’s and I’m very impressed with the responsiveness and attention to detail that you are using – I hope it continues!

-Dusty E. www.tek-media.net

You are awesome…thanks.  I appreciate the return in helping a novice such as myself.  This awesome customer service is the reason I will be buying a developer’s license in the near future.  I’m glad I bought from this company.

-Corey O. www.worldgonemobile.com

I was up all night trying to figure the subscription, and in 2 minutes, you resolved it.  It now works.  Thank you kindly!

-Gary M. www.seicorp.net

And last but not least, the “personal touch” from a new customer overseas.

Alistair, I want to hug you as it is now fixed! Thank you!

-Natalie L. www.budgetbambinogoodies.co.uk/

We encourage everyone to keep the feedback (positive as well as constructive criticism) coming.  It helps us improve and know that we can make a difference for our customers.

We have great news to share with all of the members of the Solostream community.  Solostream has been acquired by Jigsaw Group.

Jigsaw Group made this purchase because we believe Solostream, and specifically Michael Pollock, has built a great foundation for making significant contributions to the WordPress community.  We are big believers in the value and benefit that WordPress premium templates provide to people and organizations that want to publish on the web. Read More