Today I will discuss, how to add a support forum to a WordPress site. Also, how will it increase your traffic? Visit my site’s primary menu to view the demo. First I will tell you the benefits of the support forum.
Benefits of the Support Forum
As you may know, support forums are added to any site to help customers or users. If a user has a problem, he will want to contact the site admin to resolve his problem. Now I will say what is the benefit.
- All the questions and answers published in the site’s forum will be indexed in the Google search engine. So the more questions and answers are published, the higher the site’s articles rank in search engines.
- The number of articles on your site will increase without your intervention.
- The biggest benefit is that the visitor will develop a relationship with your site.
- Without giving access to the site, you can write articles with anyone.
- The more answers to a question, the bigger the article.
How to Add Support Forum to a WordPress
PLUGIN INSTALLATION
To create such a support forum, many plugins are available on the internet. But some plugins have problems that a beginner can’t catch. But the plugin I’m going to give you today is the one I’m using on my site. The plugin is – the DWQA plugin, a really great plugin.
- First, download the DWQA plugin (free version) or DWQA Plugin(Pro).
- Go to your WordPress admin panel,
- Click on the “Add New” under the Plugin section,
- Then You can find the “Upload Plugin” option on the top, click here.
- Choose the downloaded Plugin and upload it,
- Now Install and activate this plugin.
CREATE OR EDIT PAGES
Once the plugin is activated, two pages( Support Forum & Submit Question) will be created automatically. If you want to rename them you can, like – Submit Question to Ask Question.
- TO RENAME PAGE:-
- Click on the All Page option under the Page section,
- Click on the quick edit option below the page you want to rename.
- Now change the title and slug, eg:- Title- Ask Question, Slug- ask question.
- Save changes.
DWQA PLUGIN SETTINGS
1. GENERAL SECTION
- Click on the Setting option under the Question section,
- Go to the General section,
- Page Settings:-
- Question List Page – choose the “Support Forum” page,
- Ask Question Page – choose the “Ask Question” page.
- Question Settings:-
- Archive Page Show At Most – Set how many questions the page will show when someone clicks on the support forum option.
- Before A Question Appears – Turn this option on to manually disprove all questions submitted by visitors. I would definitely recommend leaving it on because if a visitor embeds the URL, either delete those links or keep them in text format. This will not increase your site’s spam score.
- Other Question Settings– Here you will get three options, the first one allows the visitor to ask a private question, which question can only be seen by that user and site admin. I recommend leaving off the second option, as it is not for all themes. By turning on the third option, the question status icon will show.
- Answer Settings:-
- Answer Listing– If you have more than one answer to a question, then how many answers will show when opening that question should be set here. If you want to keep that limit, turn this option off and set the limit below. Otherwise, to show all answers, turn this option on.
- Vote Settings– Turn it on to have the poll option on the question.
- Akismet Settings:- All the settings in this section will enable automatic spam protection.
- Use Akismet anti-spam– Enable the Akismet option,
- Akismet API key– I have shown Akismet plugin settings in my spam protection post, which settings will get you the Akismet API key. Copy and paste that API key here.
- Auto Closure Settings:- I would recommend keeping this setting off.
- Captcha Settings:- Example-“6+5=?“, you can add such a captcha while submitting a question.
- Permalink Settings:- Make the settings in this section as shown in the below image.
2. EMAIL SECTION
These settings are required to send mail to followers or admins when new questions, answers, and comments are published on your site. The structure of the mail that the follower will receive is shown below:
- Email Settings:-
- Email Logo– Upload your site logo or set its link here.
- From Emails– Here you will enter the email ID, which is associated with the contact us page of the site.
- New Question Notification– When a new question is published on your site, set up this option to receive a notification.
- New Answer Notification– If the answer to a question is published, who will receive the notification, these settings are for that.
- New Comment Notification- Through these settings, you will get notification of question or answer comments.
3. PERMISSION SECTION
Through these settings, you can set which role, and what permissions will get. For example, I will keep all access as admin, i.e. post publish, edit, delete, comments, etc. My recommendations on settings for this section are shown in the below images.
- For Question–
- For Answer–
- For Comments– Here I have not given the opportunity to anyone to comment, that is, I have not kept the comment option.
Conclusion
If you read this article completely, you will know my recommendations. I am not saying follow my recommendation, first, you read the settings, then set up as you like. If you still have any doubts, please comment, thanks.
Add a Support Forum to a WordPress Site (video)
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