I have a WordPress plugin WP Pipes hosted at http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-pipes/.
I see that it is convenience for users to ask question right in the support page at http://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-pipes, but it will be a pain when we have lots of topics in there.
Is there anyone here have experience about that? Should we offer support service right there in wordpress.org or host it in our own website?
Any help would be appreciate.
PS: I posted this question on stackoverflow but not has much answers for it.
All my support forums are on WordPress.org, but I do all my development on GitHub and that has led to a few support issues filtering in to the issues stream that are support issues and not bug reports. I also got a handful of people commenting on my blog for support, but I closed all the plugin-related blog posts. I disagree that a forum is necessarily better. I love digging through forums, but most users won’t.
I don’t see why email is not manageable. In fact, some companies are using services like zendesk to handle support completely via email.
I prefer to keep all of my support threads in a centered location. It just seems easier to manage. With that being said I have a support area where users can post issues on the GitHub page. Majority of my support goes up on the wp.org forum in the plugin repo. The smallest amount of support comes via email.