Help Guidance for New Users

Has anybody found new participants get overwhelmed when they use Discourse for the first couple times? I know there is a welcome email they get, though wonder if anybody has found a need to simplify them or otherwise post instructions or a basic one-pager to help new discussion participants who may get overwhelmed how the system works?

What kind of feedback do you get from these new participants? What is it they don’t understand?

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I think the issue is that our users sometimes misplace the notification they receive when they first join, and I would like to be able to have a link someplace so they can get back to it or otherwise locate it as needed.

Sure, that link is Profile, Messages. You could put it in a banner topic like so:

Forgotten how to use the site? Refer to your getting started message! http://discourse.example.com/my/messages

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This is helpful, @codinghorror. I had no idea (as a somewhat new admin) that everybody got their own messages OR that each one has its own url.

Helpful . . .

. . . and here is my result, though I posted this as a topic in case anybody needs more follow-up http://forum.networkedlearning.net/t/how-do-i-use-this-site-anyway/209/1

Maybe not so much of a potential problem for New members that presumably have only a few messages.
But, for example, I have over 60 and my initial “welcome” is at the bottom.

Will they know to look there?

Seems this no longer works…

This still works just fine.

It has been replaced by discobot greetings

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