[wyrm]

Increasingly I am receiving PM's from people asking for help with the skin, this post will explain why this is not a good idea and how to post your questions in a helpful manner.

Kodi and this skin are open source, and as such you are not expected to pay for their use. This does NOT on the other hand mean that this software is completely free, there is an expectation that you give something back to the community. For those people that can't code or contribute in other ways there is always the GOLD standard of open source, the sharing of KNOWLEDGE. If you PM me directly there is NO sharing of knowledge (there is no way to allow others to benefit from the answer to your question). So in future anyone asking for help with this skin via PM will be directed back to this post to ask in a more appropriate way.

So how do I ask and what information should I provide to receive help

• If your problem is to do with a banned addon or distribution don't bother asking here (board moderators will in all likelihood bin your post anyway). Go ask for support from where you got the addon originally.
  
  
• If you are running the skin on an XBox please go to http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/ and ask there as I no longer have an Xbox and can't help you (sorry)
  

Now if you are still reading this and would like me (or someone else who might be able to help) provide you with solutions, try to keep the following in mind when posting your question in this forum.

• Try to keep your questions short while providing as much information on where in the skin and what is wrong ("It's broken" does not cut it). Please as a minimum provide details of which version of the skin you are using (shown in System Information screen) and details of what platform you are running on (for example running Kodi Helix on Win7 box)
  
  
• Remember that I live in Australia, so for most people I will be at least 8 time zones away from you. An answer to a question could take 24 hours or more to get back to you, so don't play 20 questions with me or it could take a while to sort out your problem.
  
  
• The skin provides a number of tools to help pinpoint where and what the problem might be (skin setting menu "Support"), please make use of this menu to help zero in on the problem.
  
  
• Is the problem even a skin problem, or does it affect all (or even some) other skins? Try switching to the default Confluence skin and see if the problem also occurs there. If it does, its a pretty good bet that you have a Kodi (or maybe a addon) bug. You might find a solution by asking in the appropriate sub forum.
  
  
• If you would like to see a new feature added to the skin remember I am coding this skin for everybody (well mainly for me and my family, but I am open to good general suggestions). Make a good case for why your suggestion should be included and where I might see examples of your suggestion (another skin maybe) and you stand a much better chance of having the feature included. If you have a very specific suggestion (use case of one, you) I might point you in the direction of how to make the changes, but I will NOT code them for you.
  
  
• Sometimes if I need additional information to diagnose a problem I will ask you to provide a FULL debug log and or a screenshot. The skins "Support" menu has an option to turn on Debug logging and can also post the resulting debug log to xbmclogs for me to look at, take note of the url of the log file and provide a copy of that in your thread post. Pastebin is also a suitable place to post debug logs, but Please don't NOT post the logs to a file sharing site (for example Dropbox) as it is a massive PITA to read log files this way. Also Please don't post fragments of the log file (and especially don't post fragments to the forum) as you may not include something that might prove to be useful when debugging the issue. And finally keep the log file as small as possible as it is NO fun to trawl thru multi-megabyte log files. The best way to grab a small useful debug log for me is as follows:
  
  1. Turn on Debug logging in the skins Support menu
     
  2. Shutdown Kodi
     
  3. Restart Kodi and do whatever you need to do to have the issue occur
     
  4. Go back to the support menu and upload the Debug log to xbmclogs
     
  5. Take note of the url returned and post the link along with any relevant information to this sub forum (Don't PM me the link)
     

And finally, if you can share some of your hard won knowledge on the skin, please jump in with an answer. Time spent by me answering question is time NOT spent coding and improving the skin.

Wyrm (AppTV)