I’ve noticed that a TON of the support articles from http://support.wyzecam.com that are linked from the forum and elsewhere throw errors.
Here’s the latest example I came across, but there are tons of them.
It seems like if I use the search tool to search for the topic I was looking for, I’ll usually still find it, and I’ll see that it was recently updated. I assume that means that the URLs are changing when support articles get updated or reorganized or something. That’s fine, but it’s good practice to set up 301 redirects for the former URLs, so that people can still find what they’re looking for.
I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this… It’s not a “bug” related to the beta version of the app or firmware, but it seemed like the only obvious place to post this kind of feedback. If it should go into another section, one of the moderators can redirect it appropriately. I’m tagging you here, @UserCustomerGwen so that you can get this information to the web dev team or wherever it needs to go.
Unfortunately they are busy re-writing the support pages, but they aren’t installing forwarding links. The best thing you can do is search anew for anything you need…
Rewriting the support pages is a good thing. Breaking things in the process isn’t so good. Just trying to draw their attention to the issue. Any URLs that get updated should be redirected to the most appropriate corresponding new page.
Since there are so many broken links already, the web dev guys may want to check the server logs for 404 & 403 errors so that you know which articles are broken in the first place.
Okay. Cool. I tried to search the forum to see if it had been mentioned, but I guess the search failed me again. Anyway, if it’s already on their radar, I don’t want to beat a dead horse. Just wanted to be sure they were aware of it
You are the first one to mention it as far as I know. We PMd Gwen. It is good for them to see the effect it is having from someone other than us. So thanks!
I just did 10 minutes of Googling, and the problem may be tougher than it seems. I can tell from the source code that Wyze is using ZenDesk for the support site, and I’m pretty sure that’s a hosted solution. (Meaning everything is hosted on ZenDesk’s servers, not Wyze’s)
If so, that means Wyze wouldn’t have access to the server-side code in order to set up 301 redirects. And for some crazy reason, it looks like ZenDesk doesn’t support 301 redirects. (Which is REALLY surprising for a company that big! Honestly, ZenDesk’s customers – including Wyze – need to pepper them with complaints until they add that. That’s REALLY basic functionality for any kind of CMS software.)
Anyway, there IS a workaround. It’s inelegant from an SEO standpoint, but it will at least fix the problem for your customers who can’t access your help center articles. You can share this with your web dev guys:
Another part of the problem is that we’re going from articles that have multiple sections into splitting them into individual pages. So we can’t put one redirect and get everything covered. We apologize for this pain point and we are aware of it. This has been the topic of a lot of discussion and we’re looking forward to having this process completed although the previous links posted across social media and the communities will still be a problem (unless we find a solution for this later).
I’m pretty sure the help article I posted from ZenDesk above DOES give a solution that would include the previous links, although you guys would need to manually enter all of the redirects. I guess if you don’t know what all the old article URLs were in the first place, it may be tough. Considering they don’t even let you do a normal 301 redirect, I doubt ZenDesk gives you access to server logs, to see where people are hitting 404/403 errors. Otherwise, that would be the easiest way to sniff out your broken links.
