How to upload bulk question answers?

[ProThoughts (PT)]

I do have questions and answers in xls, how to upload this to newly setup forum?

thanks!

[chumstick (Lucas)]

What do you mean upload them?

Do you mean upload them to a post? If so, are you trying to attach them, or make the contents of the XLS the contents of the post?

Are you trying to make them the FAQ section of the site?

I have a feeling whatever you’re wanting to do would be fairly simple but I just don’t understand what your desired result is.

[ProThoughts (PT)]

Lucas, Thanks for the quick reply. I wrote 2000 question and answer in xls and would like to post those on my discourse forum, please let me know if there any ways to import.

If visitor comes to my forum they will at least see these 2k posts on sites.

[chumstick (Lucas)]

Oh. You’d like to import these Q/A’s as separate topics? Or post them to a single, very long, general Q/A topic? Can you provide a sample row or two from your spreadsheet?

[ProThoughts (PT)]

Yes, I would like to import these Q&A as a separate topics.

example:
question: What is cloud server?
Answer: A cloud server is a virtual server (rather than a physical server) running in a cloud computing environment. It is built, hosted and delivered via a cloud computing platform via the internet, and can be accessed remotely. They are also known as virtual servers.

Question: What is Amazon AWS?
Answer: Amazon Web Services . Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.

[chumstick (Lucas)]

I’ll keep my personal thoughts regarding how having 2000+ individual topics dedicated to single questions may be a bad idea to myself for now.

I see two possible ways of accomplishing your goal. One would be to convert your spreadsheet to a CSV and then use the API and some shell scripting to loop through the file creating a new post for every line.

Another way could be to set up “Allow posting from email” and then use Excel’s “Mail Merge” feature to email every q/A to Discourse, creating a new topic.

[ProThoughts (PT)]

Ok, could you please point me to API documentation for posting.

[chumstick (Lucas)]

https://docs.discourse.org

Here you go! Best of luck!

[ProThoughts (PT)]

thank you! appreciate you help.

[Remah (Just another happy Discourse user)]

The idea of preloading a lot of topics has been presented here before. I remember one topic that was particularly relevant but I couldn’t find it so maybe I read it on another website like Feverbee

@chumstick

I’ll keep my personal thoughts regarding how having 2000+ individual topics dedicated to single questions may be a bad idea to myself for now.

While @chumstick has chosen not to comment, I’d be reluctant to start a new forum with a lot of simple Q&A tpics. Gathering a core group of enthusiastic users would probably be a better option to encourage interaction.

Anyway,you can ignore what I say but I’m also wondering if you’ve read any of the helpful topics on starting a Discourse forum:

Blog posts on building a Discourse community

Building a Discourse Community

Launching a Successful Discourse Community

Other topics on kick-starting and seeding (creating topics and users) a new forum:

How to kick start a community?

Here’s the advice we give to customers when they sign up: Here are some tips for launching a successful discussion community: What is the “elevator pitch” for your community? The first thing people will ask: what is this place? How would you describe your community to someone you just met in a 60 second elevator ride? Post that as a topic, then pin it or make it a banner via the wrench menu on the topic. Build some interesting discussions to launch with What comes up often in interna…

Dummy user to create initial content

We just installed Discourse in our company and started to show it to people. Of course we need content to convince them to move conversations to Discourse, to do this we need to put more content. My idea was to copy some of the questions I saw today in one of our chatroom to Discourse, but I didn’t want to post them with my user (it will look weird). Is there a way to create a dummy user, like admin or Discobot, and impersonate it to post questions and answers? Anyway we are also using Google…

Seeding a new forum by creating users and content

Hi there Discourse looks amazing. Wow! A big change from my old days using phpbb. In the past, admittedly a long time ago now, I’ve had greater success starting new forums by initially seeding some content. A little social proof does wonders for engagement levels! Would love to know whether it is possible to seed a new discourse forum. What I’d like to do is to create say 200 user accounts and roughly 1000 topics and replies before launching. Is it possible to do this without having either 2…

What Strategy Should I Use To Make My Community Active

I created a forum. People are joining that forum but they are no engaging with the forum. Means they only read post but never reply and due to this forum quality is going off. What strategy should I implement, so that people starts replying of the topics also and start sharing their view regarding this. Forum Topics are - Science,Economics And Politics

[ProThoughts (PT)]

Thanks Remah! I will check all these links