Help With Contacting
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I am an admin for another domain, which in this support document of yours – ‘Live Chat Support’ (https://wordpress.com/support/live-chat/#how-to-access-live-chat-support) – says I can access live chat or email you. I can do neither and need support! This has been an infuriating process.
I am looking to find out why our website crashed, (not the one associated with account I had to create just to contact you but with the other I’m an admin for) and now I’m also wondering why I cannot contact you in any way.
Please fix this and give me a way to contact a support technician privately so I can fully explain the situation.
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to moderators and staff)
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Hey there @shanecareyrm , you’re being sent to the free-tier forums because there aren’t any upgrades on this account. Can you log in with the account that owns the upgrade? You should be able to log out, then log in with the email address that gets our renewal reminders and whatnot. If you aren’t sure what that is, please send a link to the site and we can help you sort it out.
Also, please bear in mind, our chat support is for sites that are hosted here with our paid services. If you’re using a free copy of the free WordPress software and paying some other hosting provider, you’ll want to reach out to them directly, or use the forums for the free WordPress software.
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Hi @supernovia, thank you for responding.
I’ve tried to log in with the account that owns the upgrade but it states the account doesn’t exist. I’ve been an admin on that website for 3+ years now, and we are on a paid tier that grants live chat support. I am happy to send a link to the website, but would it be possible to continue the discussion over email instead?
Please reach out to me and then we can hopefully resolve the issues.
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Hi there,
Yes, please send over the site URL, and we’ll be better able to assist you and hopefully get you into your other account. If we cannot assist you once we’ve looked at your site and account, we’ll have the Accounts team work with you via email.
Thank you! -
Hi @staff-doublebassd, the site URL is https://raptormaps.com/. My admin email for that site is the same one used for this account – please use it for contacting me if the accounts team needs to.
I’ll be on the lookout for any emails that may come through from WordPress.
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Thanks for that information. While there is a WordPress.com Business subscription and a domain connection (which is different from a domain registration), the domain raptormaps.com uses the following nameservers:
- ns-1118.awsdns-11.org
- ns-1819.awsdns-35.co.uk
- ns-468.awsdns-58.com
- ns-786.awsdns-34.net
Thus it appears at some point you moved the hosting of your site from WordPress.com to AWS (Amazon Web Services). Since the website is no longer hosted here, you would not have priority email or live chat support for your site as we are unable to help with sites hosted elsewhere.
Please note that there are three “WordPress” at play here: the WordPress software that powers your site, WordPress.org the open-source project that works on the software, and WordPress.com the managed hosting provider.
I would recommend the individual at your organization who owns the Business upgrade reach out to our support team for help in canceling that upgrade since you moved your hosting to AWS.
I hope that clarifies things!
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Hi @staff-heroponriki thanks for that was helpful and cleared it up a bit. It sounds like we are only using the WordPress software for our website?
Though we aren’t hosted on WordPress, shouldn’t we be able to receive support as an account that only uses the software to build our site?
For instance, our second to last crash that occurred was due to a plugin (which should be unrelated to the domain being hosted elsewhere) and we received an automated notification from WordPress. We had a crash happen recently and we never received the automated email telling us its cause or providing the recovery link like last time – I was hoping to utilize WordPress support for this, but is that not possible because we aren’t hosted on WordPress?
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Hello there,
Though we aren’t hosted on WordPress, shouldn’t we be able to receive support as an account that only uses the software to build our site?
So there are two types of WordPress. WordPress.com, which is a managed hosting solution and the free open source version of WordPress, which is obtained via WordPress.org and installed on a server.
A site is using the latter, would not be entitled to support from WordPress.com. You would get support from the hosting provider, theme developers and plugin developers (who are also part of the open source community) when you face issues.
WordPress has a built in fail safe to alert you of downtime when something is up with the site.
Though we aren’t hosted on WordPress, shouldn’t we be able to receive support as an account that only uses the software to build our site?
Currently, that’s correct. This is because the site is using the open source version of the software. We don’t even have access to this site to assist, as the servers are located with Amazon.
If the site is hosted with WordPress.com, we would be able to help and advise on next steps.
These chapters here: https://wordpress.com/support/?s=suport outline the support we provide.
I hope this helps clear up any confusion.
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Hi @aleone89, thank you for confirming and answering my questions. That’s cleared up the support available to us.
I have a follow-up question regarding this part of your message:
WordPress has a built in fail safe to alert you of downtime when something is up with the site.
We’ve received these safety alerts before and they’re currently sent to the user who set up the website. However, since then the management of our site has been transitioned from him to myself and a colleague. How would we change it so that the fail-safe alert emails are sent to myself and/or my colleague rather than the user who set up the website but doesn’t manage it anymore?
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Hi there, because the site is no longer hosted on WordPress.com, we don’t have direct access to it and can’t see what is sending those messages. On our end we do alert you of downtime but if you move to another provider that would be handled by some other system we do not control.
One thing you may want to consider is to install the Jetpack plugin on your site (it’s free) and when you install the plugin you will be prompted to connect your WordPress.com account.
What jetpack does is add our cloud-services (such as uptime monitoring) to WordPress sites that are hosted with other providers. Jetpack will send out notifications of downtime to the connected account, so this would allow you to see those.
Also, if I can ask, what prompted your move to another provider? The reason I ask is because when the site was hosted with us directly it had our Business Plan on it, which is a very powerful upgrade that combines the full power of WordPress (to upload themes, 3rd party plugins, modify source code, FTP access, etc.) with the advantages of our fully managed hosting platform where we take care of security, uptime monitoring, software updates, incremental backups, and in-house support with live chat option.
To move to another provider would typically mean your site would have less functionality that it did when it was here, not to mention losing access to our WordPress experts for help. We’d like to be able to help you further so I wonder if you would entertain switching back, now that you have this in mind.
Thanks for the additional info!
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Hi @staff-totoro, thanks for responding, and apologies for my delay in response. I’ve found out that our website is hosted with WP engine, but we have a DNS hosted with AWS.
http://www.raptormaps.com –> wp.wpenginepowered.com –> <Some IP owned by WordPress>
Some follow up questions:
- Would we be able to access live chat by only switching our DNS from AWS to WordPress?
- If not, and we also have to switch our servers from WP Engine to WordPress, would we be able to port over our previous backups held in WP Engine? Additionally, would we have access to a staging site with WordPress like we have with WP engine?
Thank you,
Shane
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Hi there, thanks for confirming.
Would we be able to access live chat by only switching our DNS from AWS to WordPress?
To be able to support you with your site you will need to be hosted with us directly. To do that you would need to migrate your entire site to us, which is actually not too difficult since we offer a tool that will move an exact copy of your site with just a few clicks: https://en.support.wordpress.com/import/import-an-entire-wordpress-site/
However, if you were to change the DNS only (without actually migrating the site and all source files) that would just take your site offline, which we do not recommend.
Please note that to migrate you will need the WordPress.com Business plan on our end. This will provide the tools needed for migrating an exact copy, and has the support necessary (for plugins and themes you have uploaded) for the features your site requires
Please note that it appears you had the Business Plan with us originally (before moving) and it appears that another admin on your site purchased it. From what I can see that upgrade is still active, so the import could be handled under their account without the need to purchase a new plan.
If not, and we also have to switch our servers from WP Engine to WordPress, would we be able to port over our previous backups held in WP Engine? Additionally, would we have access to a staging site with WordPress like we have with WP engine?
It’s likely that WP Engine uses their own backups system which would not be compatible with what we have here. If you were to migrate the site back to us you would have access to the backups that we offer on our end, but we could not import previous backups from another provider.
We do not offer staging functionality on WordPress.com Business (yet) so that is something you would need to give up in making this move. However, it is my understanding that staging functionality is something the dev team is working on, so we will likely add that ability over time, even if we don’t have it currently.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Hi @staff-totoro, those were very clear answers to my questions, thanks!
We are considering switching given the importance of the live chat feature, as well as how much we use all of the other features included in the business plan. A question that I had and haven’t received a clear answer for is:
With the previous website crashes our site admin received an email from WordPress stating the cause of the crash and a recovery link. Our site admin is our CEO that set up the website but has since passed management of it to myself and a colleague. How would we (my colleague and/or I) receive these emails instead of him? Do we need to become super admins or have the site’s ownership under our email?
Thanks!
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Hi again,
Our site admin is our CEO that set up the website but has since passed management of it to myself and a colleague.
Thanks for clarifying. When downtime monitoring is activated, downtime notification emails will be sent to the user who set up the site. On our end though it’s possible to change that connection to another account so they don’t get those. We could instead move the connection to you or your colleage without issue, and it’s possible to set up additional email addresses so that you both get notifications.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Hi @staff-totoro thanks for clearing that up, and that is great to hear that the connection can be moved. I will relay this information to my team and reply when I get word back on if we’d like to have the connection moved.
Thank you!
Shane -
Hi @staff-totoro, I wanted to follow up here on your comment:
Thanks for clarifying. When downtime monitoring is activated, downtime notification emails will be sent to the user who set up the site. On our end though it’s possible to change that connection to another account so they don’t get those. We could instead move the connection to you or your colleage without issue, and it’s possible to set up additional email addresses so that you both get notifications.
Adding the connection to myself and my colleague would be perfect. How should I provide the email addresses to you? Can I send them over email rather than a public forum?
Let me know and I really appreciate your support on this matter.
Kind regards,
Shane -
Hi again,
Adding the connection to myself and my colleague would be perfect. How should I provide the email addresses to you?
Some time has passed here but from what I can see, the site raptormaps.com is still hosted at Amazon AWS, and that limits our ability to help since the site has not yet been migrated to our managed site hosting. While it’s with the other host we’re not able to help with that directly. But it may help to better understand what you are trying to accomplish. You are unable to log into raptormaps.com for some reason? Or do you mean you are trying to connect to the site so you can move it from the current host to WordPress.com managed hosting?
Can I send them over email rather than a public forum?
I can see that there is another WordPress.com account that has purchased our Business Plan and started the process of connecting raptormaps.com, but it’s not under your @shanecareyrm account. You had mentioned your CEO previously. Did they make this purchase? Or someone else on your team?
If they are logged in under their account, and go to this link they would have access to live chat support under the Business Plan, so it may be fastest to have them contact us via that support method to discuss next steps https://wordpress.com/help/contact
For now we’re happy to direct you here in the public forums as much as we are able. Thanks for the additional info!
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