# Search before posting 🔍
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [February 10, 2020, 12:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170 "2020-02-10T12:13:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@blogjunkie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/blogjunkie)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2020, 12:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170/1 "2020-02-10T12:13:23Z")
Hi! 👋🏼 Newbie here and don’t know if this is the right place to post, sorry
I want to create a support community, i.e. users will be helping each other answer questions. I have seen other support communities where they make you search for answers before you can post a question. _Is this possible with Discourse??_
I see that Discourse has this cool wiki feature. All the more reason to have members search for posts before they post a new question.
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@SSebastian](https://meta.discourse.org/u/SSebastian)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2020, 1:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170/2 "2020-02-10T13:17:32Z")
I’m not sure if this is the best options, but you can make these with simple JavaScript.
If user search words, save them and create an sessionStorage. If he trying to create new post, check sessionStorage.
If sessionStorage contain one words from topic title (or content), allow user to create topic. Otherwise, disallow it.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2020, 7:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170/3 "2020-02-11T19:02:11Z")
Hi David! My suggestion would be that you spend a bit of time with the software before seeking to add features like this. You will find discourse covers this particular need in a few clever ways when starting a topic. New users get a notice reminding them about [community guidelines](https://meta.discourse.org/guidelines). Any user posting will get a notice if their topic is similar to another, existing topic.
Ironically, there is a topic about just this already, which you would have found if you had searched before posting. 🙀
> [@Push users to search before posting](https://meta.discourse.org/t/push-users-to-search-before-posting/116453):
>
> We have a Wishlist category that we try to keep consolidated and organized. It is the only category we have in which user’s new topics require mod review before acceptance. They can vote and comment on existing topics. Even though in the category intro we ask them to search before posting, we get tons of submissions for topics that already exist. We then have to go through all the steps to merge the new submission with the existing topic, which ends up being pretty time consuming. While the "Y…
Edit: just tried this with a new topic containing “search before posting” but the topic I linked to here did not show up in the “your topic is similar to…” popup. But using the full title worked - see screenshot for how it appears.
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### Author:  [@ebaralecki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ebaralecki)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2026, 5:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170/4 "2026-02-20T17:59:45Z")
Are there settings required to get this feature to work? I am working in our company’s sandbox now, but I am consistently able to create duplicate posts and I never see the popup.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2026, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-before-posting/141170/5 "2026-02-20T18:49:11Z")
There’s a site setting called `minimum_topics_similar` that default to 50 — meaning if you have fewer than 50 total topics, you won’t see the similar topic message… I suspect this is the likely culprit if the sandbox doesn’t have a lot of content.