No more tech questions via emails -- ask in the forum!
 

Important Changes Regarding Email Use:

Due to the excessive volume of lengthy questions being asked via email, we will no longer answer any tech questions that are emailed.

This excludes customers on contracts, for which email/phone support is specified, for completion of their projects or ongoing services. However, some "generic" type conversations may still be copied/pasted onto the forum, if we feel the information will benefit more people. It's why we have published so many how-to help documents, and created this forum, after all!

Join the Forum to Ask Tech Questions:

When somebody needs help, they should become part of the community, either as a Free Member -- or better yet, a Premium Member (which carries some perks, including longer and more in-depth answers).

We don't sell email addresses, spam our members, etc -- a forum is simply the best venue for complicated technical conversations, and user forum accounts are tied to verified user email accounts for the security of everybody involved. Giving us your email does not mean you'll be spammed. We hate spam, too. You should see all the software firewall rules we've put in place to keep crap out of our inboxes and off our forums.

Why the change?

From 2002-2008, we answered many technical questions via email, completely for free, often repeating ourselves and copying/pasting answers from past emails. That was not the wisest use of our time or of the site. It also stole content away from our Premium-only forum that existed from 2004-2008. We could help more people by making those conversations public.

From 2009-2010, we updated our email form to request all complex/long questions be asked in the forum, but that was often ignored. (To be fair, however, sometimes I think question askers simply did not realize that their "quick question" opened a can of worms that needed lengthy answers.) We'd often copy/paste the email into a new thread, frequently with follow-up questions aimed at helping the person, only to have the conversation die and never continue -- i.e., we were wasting our valuable time. Only very basic questions were answered via emails.

Email is not the proper place to request technical assistance -- especially for free non-paid support. Email is reserved for business communication, such as conferring with colleagues, discussing projects with clients (or potential clients), and creating relationships with advertisers and software/hardware companies.


Thanks for your understanding and cooperation as we make this necessary change to our operations. :)