In case you hadn’t noticed already, there are many people who are ready, eager and waiting to help you with your next PowerShell problem. The list of PowerShell enthusiasts is long and growing steadily, and they’re responsiveness to questions is incredible. So responsive in fact that it seems like there is a competition to see who can answer questions first!
Leverage that community!
If you have questions, post them somewhere. If you have scripts that you can’t quite work out, share them and get the community to help. If you think you can work it out but just want a few pointers, search the community and find if the answers you seek have already been posted somewhere. There’s really no reason to wait. If you’re stumped, ask for help and you’ll get it.
Here’s an updated (thanks to Hal for pointing out some important ones that I missed) list of just a few places you can go if you have questions:
- PowerShell Newsgroup – a very active newsgroup for discussions about anything related to PowerShell
- PowerGUI Community – the place to go to share PowerGUI PowerPacks or to ask questions about PowerGUI and Quest AD cmdlets
- PowerShell Community – a non-profit PowerShell Community site with forums for anything related to PowerShell, a script repository, and much more
- PowerShell Blog Search – a custom Google search of many PowerShell blogs; created and maintained by Brandon Shell (PowerShell MVP)
- The PowerScripting Podcast – a semi-weekly podcast about everything PowerShell; Jonathan Walz and Hal Rottenburg are the hosts, and this is a great source of current PowerShell information, interviews, tips and tricks, etc.
- PowerShell IRC channel (#PowerShell on irc.freenode.net) – an IRC chat room with many PowerShell savvy people hanging out, discussing PowerShell, ready to answer your questions right then and there.
If you’re looking for help on PowerShell, please use the community. You’ll be thankful you did!
Kirk out.
Technorati Tags: PowerShell, PoSh, Poshoholic, PowerGUI, PowerGUI Community, PowerShell Community
Poshoholic 
I’ve got two more to add:
– If you want live interactive help, the #Powershell IRC channel on the Freenode network is an awesome resource. There’s usually several experts (including Automation MVPs) online at any given time.
– If you’ve got a question that begs more of a long form discussion, or you are looking for some quick tips, we love to help out at the PowerScripting Podcast (http://powerscripting.net).
-Hal, co-host of PowerScripting Podcast
Hal’s absolutely right about the other two. I actually planned to include the IRC channel, then got distracted and when I came back to this post I guess the IRC channel slipped my mind. And the PowerScripting Podcast is a great resource as well.
The resources in my original post were naturally biased to those where I spend the majority of my time (and therefore those that were on my mind when I wrote this blog post), but that’s not to say there aren’t other resources as well like the two great resources Hal pointed out. Thanks for adding them in the comments Hal.