Hello! We are looking for a way to make a welcome message and community guidelines more prominent, especially for new users. We currently use a global notice to link to our community guidelines, and are considering applying the welcome banner. But is there any way (on a cloud-hosted Discourse site) to actually have a different screen come up for new users when they sign in, before they are taken to the home page?
Are there other approaches people have used to “onboard” their new users that have worked well?
I’m curious to first understand better what you’re currently experiencing that’s leading you to look for a better solution here.
Are there certain behaviors you’re expecting to see from new users that you’re finding problematic? Are there things you want them to be doing that they’re not doing? Or conversely, things you don’t want them to be doing that they are doing?
Thank you! @mcwumbly great question in terms of analysing the problem before choosing the solution! We fortunately have not had issues with user behavior, but we are expanding our audience and want to both improve the first impression/new user experience and mitigate risk when it comes to respectful discussions. @merefield thank you for turning me toward the welcome topic. I do see a default welcome topic in our site texts, but I have just tried creating a new user, and the topic does not come up for me, nor can I find the text via search. I figured it may be disabled, but I also don’t seem to see a way to turn it on in site settings.
Any thoughts? (Also, where is it meant to appear when it is enabled?)
Thanks!
Interesting @NateDhaliwal does @systemGeneral mean we are looking for posts created by the system in the general category? We are one of the groups that has deleted the general category but supposedly we should still be able to have a welcome topic:
However, I’m not sure where it’s meant to show up if there is no General category. Ideally, we would want users to see the post before they even see the home page. Is that generally how welcome topics are meant to work, or no?
I see the following in our site texts: “We are so glad you joined us. Here are some things you can do to get started…” So I know what the text is, it looks like the default text, but nowhere to be found on our site via search.
That is interesting, thank you so much for looking into it on your site! I do wonder if we deleted the topic, but can’t be sure as I wasn’t around during launch. Do you happen to know if on your site, new users always see that topic first when they arrive, or do they need to go to the General category to see it?
It will be pinned at the top of the topic list for them; they need to read the topic/manually change it in the topic controls to be unpinned for them.
If users have already read it, it will display in regular order (i.e. ordered based on bump date). Because of this, many forums have this topic as the bottom topic in the topic list.
Fortunately, it is usually topic_id 7 (it is 1 here in Meta for some reason) so you can probably find it and undelete it if you visit yoursite.com/t/7 - or some other single or teen id.
Wow, @nathank with your advice, I think I have finally found our welcome post, which has been both edited from the original and deleted!
And @NateDhaliwal your explanation made me realise that our site may be different from others in that our home page displays our categories for browsing, not the Latest topic list with the pins on the top. That makes me understand why that topic really would be clearly visible with the same kind of home page as this meta site has (like in the screenshot below) but would require a user on our site to go somewhere (Latest topics) to see it.
I like to use a dynamic banner with alternating message: one for visitors, one for new members (displayed after they signed up and until they reach the next trust level).
The messages are html blocks and you’d also need to add custom styles. It’s a bit technical probably, but it can work nice when adjusted. E.g. here’s an example from a community:
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