Beer With Kyle - The Evolution of Hosting and SiteSupport at WA
Hey Everyone,
Today I want to walk you through improvements to our Hosting & Site Support environment at Wealthy Affiliate, and how we’re evolving from generic ticket responses to real-time, AI-driven self-service tools.
Beer of the Week
This week’s pour is Corona Zero (0.0% ABV). It looks, tastes, and feels like a classic Corona but without the alcohol—perfect for a morning recording (or anytime you want a refreshing, lighter beer).
Current Site Support Process
- Ticket Submission: Users submit hosting or website issues via our support page.
- Generic Updates: Historically, you received generic “we’re working on it” replies until a server admin applied a Band-Aid fix.
- Problem: These superficial fixes addressed symptoms without resolving root causes, leaving you waiting and guessing.
Transitioning to Proactive & Intelligent Support
- Root-Cause Resolution:
- We’re shifting from reactive Band-Aid fixes to proactive architecture improvements.
- Server administrators and AI diagnostics will identify and solve core issues (plugins, themes, resource conflicts) before they break your site.
- Real-Time Self-Service Tools (Coming Soon):
- Automated Diagnostics: Instantly pinpoint malfunctioning plugins or themes within your dashboard.
- On-Demand Backups & Restores: Run site backups and restores without submitting a ticket.
- Interactive Troubleshooting: Guided, AI-powered workflows to resolve common errors in real time.
- AI-Enhanced Ticket Responses:
- No more generic replies.
- You’ll receive personalized, human-like updates as AI and support engineers collaborate on complex issues.
Ongoing Server Architecture Upgrades
- Performance & Reliability: We’re optimizing server clusters, caching layers, and database configurations to minimize downtime.
- Access Stability: Recent login and site-manager hiccups were caused by backend updates; these have been resolved and won’t recur in the new beta environment.
- Plugin Blacklisting: Abusive or conflict-prone plugins will be flagged and blocked to protect all users.
Why This Matters
- You Get More Control: Self-serve tools empower you to fix minor issues instantly.
- Faster Resolutions: AI triage and proactive monitoring reduce mean time to repair.
- Higher Uptime: A more robust hosting architecture means your sites stay online and fast.
Join the Conversation
We’re eager to hear your thoughts on these hosting and support enhancements:
- What self-service tools would you use most?
- How important is real-time diagnostic feedback?
- Have you encountered plugin or theme conflicts recently?
Jump into the comments below and share your feedback!
Recent Comments
79
WOW!!! Helping and fixing in real time? As you and I have discussed in the past, with my background in Quality Assurance, "in real time" was something we would strive for but it was difficult to implement. Of course I'm talking years ago.
This will be like the 5th platform update I've experienced since being a member here. I look forward to its launch. I have no doubt it will be an improvement. WA always impresses me with what you roll out. Things sure have changed in 12 yrs.
Yes, absolutely the goal. The thing is, technology is making us more capable than ever, making it easier to assess very complicated problems, and write procedures to fix problems on the fly.
So you are going to see a real evolution of not just the platform (in the coming weeks), but SiteSupport as we roll through the coming months. ;)
This sounds great! I'm hoping that there will be an opportunity at some point to just give a list of what we have for plug-ins and then receive feed back on which ones we should keep and which ones we should get rid of and suggestions of ones we should install instead.
Thanks for the continual improvement!
Scott
Yeah, the goal is to offer you insights into your own issues, and offer you ways to fix them in real time. Most issues derive out of plugins/themes, so it would be more than ideal to show you which are the culprits.
Exciting stuff is coming your way! :)
I've been happy with site support and have only needed to use it when I've needed hosting updates such as CNAME etc.
Responses have been quick and good.
However last week I did make a request and there was no reply. Followed up with an update request about 2 days later and still no reply and finally cancelled the ticket as I was able to setup the facility I wanted on another site.
I look forward to the new updates and maybe being able to do a bit more independently rather than having to go through support.
We are making this transition over the last week, and this may have been a result of that. And if you ever need to escalate anything at all, reach out. We want to be able to put processes like cname into your hands, and make this totally streamlined.
There will be a few bumps along the way, but the hosting has improved drastically in just the past few weeks, and we are knocking off a lot of complicated tasks on a weekly basis, things that used to be manually run over and over again to "fix" issues, are now just automatic.
Thanks for your patience, and glad you have had lots of good experiences with the hosting support. Our goal here is the best community and support in the industry, and we will continue to make that the focus.
Thank you for the update, Kyle. I had never really needed Site Support and would, in general, be reluctant to use it, since I have a strong feeling they will recommend 'try this, try that' and I would have no idea how to 'try this or that' or would already have tried it without success. Recently, according to several people in chat, Site Support has not been responding and the feeling was that they were simply overwhelmed with all the updates going on.
Yesterday I submitted two tickets - because you asked me to in chat - with what are possibly related issues - and then a third, probably also related, occurred to me (which I fixed in my own way. ) I quickly got two replies, one from Carson, and I have a feeling that the issue may not be easy to fix. We will see...
Since I don't really have any experience of Site Support, I trust you that the updated system will help everyone and inspire confidence. It will be good to be able to reassure anyone showing up in chat worried about a website problem, that Site Support will fix it.
Thanks for all your involvement with the community and for keeping us updated about what's going on - both regarding problems and improvements.
Isabella
See more comments
Hi Kyle!
Thanks for the update on the evolution of Hosting and SiteSupport here at WA!
It will be awesome to be able to receive insights on our issues and to have the ability to fix them in real time. Along with the improvements in hosting, it is indeed exciting times ahead.
Great things coming! Can't wait to see what you and your team roll out in the near future! As always, the improvements are greatly appreciated.
Have a great weekend ahead! Wishing you the very best!
Kind regards,
Nichola
Yeah, that is something we feel we can effectively provide to you, and it will make you much more efficient in terms of fixing issues that are outside of the realm of hosting and discovering why problems are happing, but also an environment where you can actually perform hosting related tasks yourself. You are in essence going to be able to become a server admin in some respects. ;)
Great stuff! 👍😀😍