Yalla Download

If you ever had a question about WordPress.com, chances are you’ve visited our Community Support Forums. Forums are a great place to search for solutions and get answers to your questions. One cool thing about the forums is that while Happiness Engineers help out there, WordPress.com enthusiasts — people who have a strong interest in WordPress.com and helping other people — provide the majority of answers.

Sergio Ortega (airodyssey) is a prolific forum contributor. We asked him a bit about himself, how he got involved in the forums, and his tips for getting and providing great support.

You’ve been blogging about your passion — aviation — since 1998, and moved your website to WordPress.com in 2010. Tell us about your site and how you decided to move to WordPress.com.

I had always wanted to write about aviation and share my passion with the world, but could not find a way to do it until I discovered the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. At first, the website was simply called Sergio Ortega’s Hangar and was structured more or less like a magazine with feature articles, except that it was online. A few months later, I renamed it airOdyssey, and airodyssey.net in 2001. Some features, such as the quizzes, have been there from the very beginning. Others, such as the monthly Guess The Airline challenge, have been suggested by visitors. I actually made a few friends through the site over the years! I moved to WordPress.com in 2010 primarily for financial reasons. Domain mapping through WordPress.com costs me a fraction of what I used to pay for hosting alone. Then I discovered how easy it was to use and what a nice community it has. Sure, I had to give up a few comforts, such as placing advertisements and running my own scripts, but it was worth it.

You started contributing to the Community Support Forums about two years ago, about the same time that you joined WordPress.com. How did you get involved, and what made you stay?

I discovered the forums a couple of months after joining and realized that it was made of users like me. At the time, I watched a few regular volunteers (timethief, thesacredpath, justpi, auxclass, raincoaster, to name a few) and noticed that hey, I could do that too. After all, in my previous jobs, I’ve often been a “go-to person” for technical questions because I like to read support documents. And that’s exactly what I did prior to transferring my site to WordPress.com. So, with what I had learned so far, I started answering easy questions, then moved on to more challenging ones. I continued because of the friendly atmosphere among fellow volunteers and because I felt that what I was doing made a difference.

In the past two years, you’ve posted over 15,000 replies in four languages: English, French, Spanish, and German. That’s pretty impressive! How do you keep up with the different forums, and where do you like to hang out most?

Over 15,000 replies? Really? Wow. I used to post only on the English forums. Nowadays, I spend most of my time in the French forum, where I’m the only moderator, followed by the Spanish one, where I share moderating duties with another user (galois). I peruse the German forum every blue moon in order to not get too rusty with that language. Unfortunately, my life is pretty busy nowadays, so I don’t have much time for the English forums anymore.

What kind of questions do you like helping users with, and what do you find the most rewarding about contributing to the forums?

I like answering questions that involve more research than usual. In other words, cases where the user appears to have done all of their homework (has read the support documents, searched previous threads, etc.). What I find the most rewarding is to feel useful and to get compliments about my level of knowledge. If only they knew that I was a beginner too before. . . . I also learned tons of things by answering questions and by reading answers from other volunteers. That kind of knowledge personally helped me build my website.

What’s the one thing you wish users knew before they posted to the forums?

The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get involved with the support forums?

Don’t be afraid to answer a question for which you know the answer. Just because there is a set of regular volunteers doesn’t mean you can’t pop in and help too! But if you don’t know the answer or if you’re not sure, you might want to wait and see how a more experienced volunteer answers the question later on. Then you’ll know what to say if that question comes up next time. This way, you’ll also avoid misleading or confusing anyone and you’ll earn the respect of your fellow volunteers.

Thank you, Sergio, for everything you’ve been doing for the WordPress.com community and for the time you took to answer our questions.

Remember, forums are there for the community — this means you. If you have a question, search the forums to find the answer. If you’re knowledgeable about WordPress.com, find an unreplied thread — maybe you’ll be able to help a fellow user.

Java software allows you to run applications called "applets" that are written in the Java programming language. These applets allow you to have a much richer experience online than simply interacting with static HTML pages.

PhraseExpress, the Text Expander for Windows, helps you to speed up your typing tasks in any editor by saving lots of keystrokes. It is ideal for people who are continually typing the same things over and over, reducing the time spent typing and minimizing spelling mistakes.

Autoruns shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser hel...

Are you looking for a PDF Reader that follows the principle of less is more? Than Sumatra PDF is for you! The lightweight program is a free open source PDF, XPS, eBook (ePub, Mobi), CHM, DjVI and Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader running on Windows. SumatraPDF starts very fast and comes with a clean and simple interface. The small file size makes it ...

All the codecs you need for Windows 7 to play AVIs, DVDs and more!

A complete disaster recovery solution for your home and office. Protect your personal documents, photos, music and emails. Upgrade your hard disk or try new operating systems in the safe knowledge that everything is securely saved in an easily recovered backup file.

LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs.

µTorrent is a small and incredibly popular BitTorrent client.

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.