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How to Add Ask Me Anything Anonymously in WordPress

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Have you seen the Ask Me Anything (AMA) segment on popular sites like Reddit, Tumblr, and Quora?

Recently, a user asked if it was possible to add it to WordPress. AMA allows users to ask you questions anonymously, and then you can answer them directly from your website.

In this article, we will show you how to add Ask Me Anything (AMA) anonymously in WordPress.

How to add ask me anything anonymously in WordPress

What Is Ask Me Anything Anonymously?

Popular sites like Reddit and Quora occasionally host famous personalities on their websites to answer questions submitted by their users. Users on Reddit can also host their own Ask Me Anything forums.

On Reddit, you can even find a separate AMA subreddit where you will see people of different professions answering questions.

AMA reddit

Tumblr also has a similar feature that allows blog owners to receive questions from their users.

Both Quora and Tumblr provide an option for users to ask questions anonymously. Anonymity helps users who don’t want to reveal their identity when asking a question.

One option is to add a post or page on your WordPress website where users can ask you questions in comments. While users could use fake names to post anonymous questions, this setup could discourage some readers.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how you can add an ‘Ask me anything anonymously’ feature in WordPress.

Adding the Ask Me Anything Anonymously Feature in WordPress

The easiest way to set up Ask Me Anything anonymously in WordPress is by using a WordPress plugin.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Ask Me Anything (Anonymously) plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » Ask Me Anything page from the WordPress dashboard to generate a shortcode.

Ask me anything shortcode

At the top, you will see the shortcode that you can use to display the Ask Me Anything feature on a post/page or in a sidebar widget.

It will look something like this:

[askmeanythingpeople]

Note that you will need to create a new post/page with the Ask Me Anything shortcode, even if you decide to show it in a sidebar widget.

Besides that, there are other settings you can configure for your anonymous AMA.

For instance, the plugin lets you select the answer list order, enter an author name that will be shown to users, success message, question box title, verification question and answer, and more.

Additional AMA settings

After editing the settings for your Ask Me Anything anonymously, you can create a new post or a page.

Once you are in the WordPress content editor, simply add a Shortcode block and enter the Ask Me Anything shortcode.

How to add a shortcode block to WordPress

Next, you can enter some text and add the shortcode to the block.

When you are done, simply publish or update your page.

Add AMA shortcode to a page

You can now visit your WordPress blog to see the Ask Me Anything feature in action.

Users can now ask questions anonymously and participate in the discussion.

AMA anonymously preview

Adding Ask Me Anything Anonymously in the Sidebar

If you also want to add the AMA section to your WordPress sidebar, then you can use this method.

Note: This method won’t work if you are using a block theme since it won’t have a sidebar widget area. However, you can design custom sidebars for block themes using a page builder plugin like SeedProd. For more details, see our guide on how to display different sidebars for posts and pages in WordPress.

First, you will need to create a WordPress post or page with the Ask Me Anything shortcode inside it. You can also use the same page or post where you added the AMA earlier.

From here, make sure that you note the post or page ID, as you will need it in the next step.

After that, you need to visit Settings » Ask Me Anything from the WordPress dashboard and select the ‘Sidebar Widget’ option from the ‘Choose Location’ dropdown menu.

Choose sidebar location and page ID

The plugin will switch its options for the sidebar widget. Now, you need to enter your post or page ID.

Once you are satisfied with the options, just copy the shortcode and paste it into a sidebar widget area.

You can do this by going to Appearance » Widgets page and adding a Shortcode widget block.

Adding a shortcode block to the WordPress sidebar

Next, paste the shortcode inside the shortcode widget area and click on the ‘Update’ button to store your changes.

You can now visit your website to see the Ask Me Anything section in the sidebar.

AmA in sidebar

Answering and Moderating Questions

Now that your anonymous AMA feature is ready, you can allow users to participate and leave their questions.

User questions are stored in your WordPress database as comments. You can simply visit the Comments page to see them and approve them.

Just see our guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress to learn more.

Moderate ama questions

You can answer a question by simply clicking on the ‘Reply’ link below the question. You can also delete a question if you don’t want it to appear on your website.

All questions will appear anonymously on your website. Approved questions and your answers to them will appear below the AMA form.

View AMA answers and questions

We hope this article helped you add Ask Me Anything anonymously in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the must-have WordPress plugins to grow your website and our guide on how to add a forum in WordPress.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

12 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
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  2. Ilana Hipshman says

    Hello, I have an inquiry.

    I followed the rules exactly, first creating a post, then using the ID of that post in the plugin to create a sidebar widget. Everything seems to have worked, except the widget shows up with the shortcake, instead of the actual plugin.

    Where may I have gone wrong?

  3. Abby says

    I’m using the plugin as more of a confessional than a question and answer section and it seems like it will work really well for this! I have a few questions,
    How do I change, “Someone asked” to Someone said or perhaps remove that piece altogether?
    How do I remove the Gravatar?
    Is there anyway I can add reactions to the comments (questions)?

    Thanks in advance

    • Arun Basil Lal says

      You can change ‘Someone asked’ to anything you want using the shortcode attribute ‘anonymous_name’ and remove the Gravatar by setting the attribute ‘avatar_size’ to 0.

      So your shortcode will look something like:

      [askmeanythingpeople anonymous_name=”A random person asked” avatar_size=”0″]

      To add reactions, you will need to find a plugin that adds reactions to WordPress comments. And that will add reaction to this as well since questions and answers are simply WordPress comments.

  4. Fadolla says

    Hello Syed :
    can u help me about my WordPress site, when i want to login to the admin panel it always must login two times with the first time it show this Error below .

    ” ERROR: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser. You must enable cookies to use WordPress. ”

    what can i do to make it right?
    thank before hand .

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