Using Discourse as a FAQ Help Center

Community
1

Hello all,

FIRST
I am needing to create a new FAQ/help center on our website and instead of having to update/edit all the topics manually, I want to embed the discourse threads (OP) and the comments that follow -which will link back to our forums. (For dynamic support and conversation) I am going to create a FAQ category in our forum and would like to create answers/resources to those that will link to our help page and then arrange on our help page in the correct categories/themes… I want people to be able to read the first post of the thread (which will be mine) and then also engage in the comments if they wish to continue the conversation…etc.

SECOND
The solved button is great, but instead, I would love to implement a "was this thread/FAQ helpful? I suppose I can ask for “likes” on the original post…is that the only way to solicit that? I would like a thumbs up/thumbs down instead…

Any ideas on either of those would be helpful. Has anyone done something similar?

My other idea was to have to manually create FAQ’s on our help page, and then do the embedded discourse comments that link back to our forum. So then, I can build that “was this article helpful” on our help page and promote further conversation and follow up in our forum.

Thank you!!

AlexB

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There’s been enough discussion on the concept of downvoting to say there’s very little chance of that happening in discourse core.

You could add a poll to the bottom of each article for helpful/not helpful.

Personally, the FAQ Help Center aspect of Discourse is really going to take off once we can get simple HTML Anchors

Good news is that it’s slated for Release in 1.5

7 Likes
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Thanks for the reply! So does that mean I have to wait until March 2016?

4

Being a paid customer would help us rush it a bit in the release cycle :slight_smile: that said, that date is when it is slotted in stable, it may be released into beta well before then

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You’re a great salesman. Trust me, i’m all in - selling it up the chain…

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Do you have any metrics that can help me prove discourse roi? I know you have some metrics in the admin tool, but love to hear ideas. Especially around - 1 moderator = 1 customer support person you didn’t have to hire…etc.

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Depending on you user case this may or my not be applicable.

At the SitePoint forum most “help me” topics involve members that have problems with mark-up / code
Some are about how to use Discourse (eg. oneboxing, code blocks etc.)
Once in a while there is one asking to clarify forum policy

And at times there is a SitePoint the site topic (eg. how do I sign up for Premium membership? etc.)

For most topics other members and Staff can help. But as Staff are volunteers, some of the “business related” questions can not be answered.

In these cases mentioning or inviting someone from SitePoint the company into the topic may not reduce the need for support personnel but it does mean they don’t need to put in as much effort checking the forum

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We have a resource library in wordpress, using discourse as a commenting system. It would be a big help for us as well to provide a simple thumbs up/thumbs down rating system for each resource, which we’d also prefer to see happen in discourse than using some wordpress rating plugin.

One idea I have looked into is allowing voting in polls directly by email, or the ability to share polls in various places including other topics, PMs, etc. This doesn’t exist yet but I think it would go a long way to increase engagement.

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I know I am reviving this a bit, but it does fit with what we’re about to go back to at Auth0. I am wondering if those in this thread who previously talked about what they were intending to do could provide feedback as to how it worked using Discourse as a FAQ/Help Center?