In this article, we’ll be covering how to create a question and answer site in WordPress. If this is the type of website you’re looking to build, this article is just for you.
The Internet is an endless source of information and knowledge. However, sometimes we may lack a concrete answer to a question we need an answer for. This is where Q&A websites come into play. These are type of websites that allow users to ask questions and get answers from the community or experts on a particular topic. If you have been planning to create your own Q&A website, in this article, we’ll be reviewing some of the best question and answer WordPress themes and plugins. WordPress is an excellent platform for creating a Q&A website, and we will list some of the best themes to hopefully make your job easier. We have even included some question and answer plugins on the list just in case changing your theme is not an option for you.
What is a Q&A website?
Before we start creating a Q&A website, we need to give a brief explanation of what that type of website is. It is a platform that allows any user to ask a question in any field and get an answer to those questions from another member of the community or an expert. Very often on such websites there are many experts who, by giving answers, promote themselves and their expertise. One of the most famous Q&A websites today is Quora.
How to make a Q&A website using WordPress?
Below we will list a few steps on how to use WordPress to create your Q&A website. You can follow these steps to create a fully functional website with lots of visits and engagement from other users.
1. Buy quality hosting and install WordPress – since this type of website usually has high traffic, we recommend that you buy a quality hosting package from trusted hosting providers. Our recommendation is Bluehost or Pressable, which both provide hosting packages specially created WordPress websites.
2. Choosing a suitable theme – this is a very important step in creating a website. An attractive design as well as ease of use will attract more users and provide more chances for monetization. Later in this article we will list some of the best question and answer WordPress themes.
3. Install the plugin for Q&A – if you have decided that for some reason you will not use a ready-made theme for your website, then you can install a plugin that will have Q&A options. One of the best on the market right now is the AnsPress WordPress plugin. This is a free plugin that you can find inside the WordPress repository.
4. Adjusting the settings – adjusting the theme or plugin according to your needs. It is very important to immediately set rules for user groups, user roles and rules for content moderation.
5. Encourage user activity – it is very important to encourage users to ask questions. Post 100 questions that you think are attractive and wait for the answers to start pouring in.
6. Promotion – no matter how good your website is, if no one knows about it then that’s a problem. Promotion is a key segment in creating a successful website. Use social networks and other marketing channels to promote your website. Of course, you must also pay a lot of attention to SEO for your website to rank well on internet search engines.
Now we will list some of the most popular WordPress themes for creating a Q&A website.
Answers – Question and Answer Theme
This is a great WordPress theme created by the Templatic team. You can use it to create a knowledge base or Q&A portal with free or paid submissions. It has many great features such as vote on answers, charge for question submissions, choose the best answer, custom register form, customize using widgets, translate answers, it includes blog and many more great options. This is a premium theme and one of the best solutions for creating a Q&A website.
Ask me – Question and Answer Theme
This is another great WordPress theme for a Q&A website. It has a very attractive design and allows users to ask questions and rate the answers. This theme is characterized by modern user profile pages, unique question pages, user points and badges system and many other useful options. You can post questions on any page of your choice, there is a possibility to modify the ask question form, all theme features can be managed on the front end, users have the option to pick best answers, the best users can get badges and points, every answer can be liked or disliked, and the administrator has complete insight into the count and statistics. This theme has Ajax live search, high speed performance and no coding skills needed to make your Q&A website the way you imagined it. Ask me is a premium WordPress theme and does not have a limited free version.
Sabai Discuss – Question and Answer Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that is compatible with almost all WordPress themes and will help you create a great Q&A WordPress website. Using this plugin you can create a website that will have functionality like Yahoo Answers, Quora or Stack Overflow. Some of the most important features of this plugin are fully responsive and flat design, advanced search by numerous criteria, filter questions and answers by custom fields, post and edit comments inline, tag questions, the possibility of adding file attachments, selecting questions as featured, custom fields, user profile pages and reputation system, allow guests to post questions and answers, short widgets, email templates and many other useful options. This excellent plugin can also be used to create a helpdesk portal for WordPress.
Woffice WordPress Theme
This is an excellent premium WordPress theme that has the features of a business application, but also has a Q&A section that allows users to ask questions and look for all kinds of solutions. This theme is compatible with Elementor page builder and it is possible to change absolutely every part of it. It should also be noted that it is compatible with all plugins, and it comes with integrated forum plugins, project management tools, wiki knowledge, files management, directory extension, widgetized dashboard and many more useful options. Regardless of whether you are creating a community site, educational site, a business portal with community, a courses site or a charity site – the Woffice theme has absolutely all the options to successfully create any website you want. There are many satisfied users who pointed out some key highlights – live ajax chat, calendar addons, learndash online courses, bbpress forum, custom login page, RTL support, notification center and many others.
Knowledge Base Theme
A very good theme if you want to create a wiki and knowledge base website. It supports a bbPress forum that you can add to your Q&A website. This theme has a responsive layout, is based on Twitter Bootstrap and looks great on any screen size, regardless of whether it’s a PC, tablet or phone. Developers created this theme keeping in mind best SEO practices, so this theme is completely SEO friendly. Another useful option is Ajax based live search which will help you to find articles, pages, forums, topics and other things you are looking for very quickly.
Some of the key features are clean & modern design, theme is fully responsive, it has live chat feature, full localization support, four color skins, custom widgets, contact templates, various shortcodes, child theme and many others.
BuddyBoss
This theme is an excellent choice for all those who want to create a community and course platform and earn some money from it. It is great for creating an online community or for a Q&A website, and is used by more than 50,000 users, many of whom are world-famous companies. There are two versions of this theme, namely the theme with web courses features, and the theme with web community features. It is compatible with Elementor, Gutenberg, WPBakery, Beaver Builder and many other page builders, so it is possible to change any part of it in just a few clicks. You can integrate multiple learning and content creation platforms. This theme is decorated with an attractive design and a lot of custom-made options that will satisfy even the most demanding users.
DW Helpdesk
This great theme is designed for people who want to create a helpdesk system for their users. However, there are many great options that allow you to create excellent knowledge base, Q&A and FAQ WordPress site. Within this theme there are 4 premium plugins, namely DW Questions and answers PRO, DW Knowledge base PRO, DW Glossary and DW FAQ. Keeping this in mind you can create a website of your choice without any limit. Within the customizer section, you can make unlimited changes to colors, text, images or any other content. DW Helpdesk theme is fully responsive and looks great on all devices regardless of screen size.
Conclusion
We hope this article has shown you how to create a question and answer site in WordPress. Q&A websites are great for traffic with all of the users who ask questions and those who answer questions. Using WordPress to build this type of website makes the job a whole lot easier without having to pay a lot of money to build a questions and answers platform.