When I started working with WordPress, I thought my job was to fix websites.

A website was broken.

I had to find out why.

A plugin was not working.

I had to fix it.

Someone couldn’t do something.

I had to explain it.

It sounded simple.

But after years of doing support, I realised I was learning much more than WordPress.

I was learning about people.

People don’t come to you with problems. They come with frustration.

Sometimes a support message would begin with:

“Nothing is working.”

But usually, something was working.

They just didn’t know what to do next.

So I learned to read between the lines.

What are they actually trying to do?

Where did they get stuck?

What have they already tried?

What do they need from me right now?

Sometimes the answer was technical.

Sometimes it was simply a clearer explanation.

That was one of the first things support taught me:

Before solving the problem, understand the person.

I learned to stay calm

Websites have a funny way of breaking at the worst possible time.

A page disappears.

A form stops working.

A plugin update creates a new problem.

And someone is waiting for an answer.

Over time, I learned not to panic just because something looked complicated.

Look again.

Break it down.

Find the first thing that doesn’t make sense.

Then take it one step at a time.

I still use that way of thinking today.

Not just with websites.

I learned that good work is often invisible

Some of the best support work never gets noticed.

A problem that never happens.

A good piece of documentation.

A tutorial that helps someone solve something without asking for help.

A small process change that saves someone time.

You don’t always get to see the result.

But it matters.

That changed the way I think about work.

Not everything valuable needs to be visible.

Sometimes doing a good job means making someone else’s day a little easier.

I learned to ask better questions

The longer I worked in support, the more I realised that the first question is rarely the right one.

“What’s wrong?” is a start.

But sometimes the better question is:

“What were you trying to do?”

That small difference can change everything.

Because when you understand what someone wanted to achieve, the problem often becomes much clearer.

I think this is something I carry into my creative work now too.

Before asking how something should look, I want to understand:

What are we trying to say?

Who are we saying it to?

How should it make them feel?

And perhaps the biggest lesson was trust

When someone gives you a problem, they are trusting you with it.

They don’t need you to show them how much you know.

They need to feel that someone is listening.

That someone will not make them feel silly for asking.

That someone will stay with the problem until it makes sense.

Ten years of WordPress support taught me a lot about websites.

But I think the lessons I carry with me are much simpler:

Listen.

Look closely.

Stay calm.

Ask better questions.

Make things easier for the person on the other side.

Maybe that is what those years were really teaching me.

I thought I was learning how to fix websites.

I was learning how to understand people.