Supporting users with links to specific pages

Community
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Continuing the discussion from Create a link that will bring a user to their own profile:

I spend most of my time as a Discourse Admin educating users. I have many users over the age of 55 who have used Yahoo Groups for 20 years. The transition has been hard for them. I have a section on my website called HelpDesk in which I have a series of videos and tutorials. There are some users who appreciate simple animated gifs that show them how to send a PM, but other users prefer links to help them find what they want to do.

If a user asks, “How do I see my sent messages?” Writing this is confusing and hard to follow for some users:

  1. Click on the circle in the upper right hand corner. Click it.
  2. Look for the mailbox icon. Click it.
  3. Look for Sent “click it”

A video or animated gif can help them visualize all of this.

This is better:

How do I see my sent messages?

Just click here! Please see our FAQ for more help.

I’m working on building something for my FAQ pages that links them to some key activities. Hopefully, as they click around they will begin to start learning where things are located.

I have gathered some of the key links that will help users find things. It also helps me to make requests such as: Please update your profile picture by clicking here. If you want to learn more, please watch this video.

Here are some useful links:

I would be interested in hearing your success stories in educating users who struggle with technology.

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The ongoing education of users in an older demographic would be a great use case for a superuser program. Empowering some of those users to educate and support others will (a) free up your time a bit and (b) strengthen the bonds that they have with the community and each other.

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