Support Forums: Re-establish use of the `/support` top level page

[Clorith]

With the redesign of the HelpHub, they moved this content to the new /documentation top level page. In that same action, the /support top level page was redirected to the new HelpHub location as well.

It would be nice if we could have a support landing page here instead, we used to have that before HelpHub (HelpHub was implemented as part of the Support Theme on dotorg, with a companion plugin initially). By having a proper support landing page, it would be possible to properly link off to rosetta forums in a unified location (the support team currently maintains a manual list in their handbook, which is well hidden, and it would be nice to help lift up these communities existence, as the locale-recommendations bar is flimsy at best, but is the only way to do so currently).

One of the drawbacks of the current redirect of the support top level page is that this is a 301 permanent indicator to search engines, and a search for "WordPress support" would take you to to /documentation (some indexes are now up to date and take you to the forums directly, this was not initially the case). I'm a big fan of users helping them selves before seeking assistance when possible, but there's no reason a landing page can't have a "search our documentation" header like it had before the HelpHub redesign, even on the support landing page to help with this, but still maintain it's support-focuses otherwise.

I'm aware that a redesign of the support pages have been talked about, but they're also the last in the group due to the high complexity from all the tie-ins with the support theme; forums, plugins, and themes. Getting a leg up on the potential effect of permanently redirecting support elsewhere, and at the same time lifting up other parts of our community, when its possible to do this without any major changes (HelpHub's front-page will be replaced with the old support front-page by default if we disable the widgets in use, this was so that HelpHub could be rolled out to rosetta sites easily back in the day).

Just to point it out though, this isn't specifically about moving /support/forums up on layer to /support, as I think the hierarchy of having forums defined in the URL like this makes perfect sense, but rather about not having a "non-existent" parent page, that could instead have links to our guidelines and similar in a natural and discoverable location, and maintain the ranking-potential of this page without causing confusion over it shifting back and forth in purpose.

[adamwood]

100% agree. I find the behaviour of both /support and /forums both redirecting to /documentation to be a very frustrating experience. I have the support forums bookmarked in my browser because I know I can't directly navigate there easily.

This issue relates to another confusing experience outlined in https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7455

[ryelle]

For reference, the content that was on /support: ​https://web.archive.org/web/20221031155731/https://wordpress.org/support/

This content now lives at /documentation, which IIRC was why it was requested to redirect. If we bring back a /support page, it will also need new copy.

Maybe the first row of content on /support/forums would be a good start, and help with the issue on #7455- keep just the forums list on /support/forums, and the welcome/documentation/get involved content on /support.

[dd32]

#7468 was marked as a duplicate.