Do you want to build an online question and answer community like StackOverflow or Quora? Question and answer websites are fun, highly engaging, and very helpful.
These websites make money from user-generated content which makes them an easy to start online business.
In this article, we will show you how to easily create a question and answers site in WordPress without any programming skills.
You can create a whole site dedicated to Q & A, a single FAQ page, or add a question and answer section to your existing WordPress site.
Gettings Started with Question and Answers Website
To start your own question and answers website, you will need the following items.
- A domain name (This is your website’s address on the internet. Example, wpbeginner.com)
- A web hosting account (This is where your website’s files are stored. All websites need web hosting).
- Question And Answers Add-on for WordPress
A domain name costs around $14.99 / year and web hosting prices start from $7.99 per month (usually paid annually).
Now, this is not a small amount if you are just starting out.
Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users discount on web hosting and a free domain name. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←
Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
After you have purchased hosting, they will automatically install WordPress for you. You can also do it yourself, by following our complete WordPress installation tutorial.
Once you have WordPress installed, you can move on to installing a question and answers plugin. WordPress plugins are extensions that allow you to add new features to your website.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to set up questions and answers website in WordPress.
Setting up Your Question and Answers Site
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the DW Question Answers plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the plugin creates two new pages in your WordPress site:
- DWQA Questions – This page will display all questions.
- DWQA Ask Question – This page contains a form where users can ask new questions.
The title and URLs of these pages contain DWQA which looks bad. Let’s change this.
Head over to Pages » All Pages and click Quick Edit link below each page.
This will show page details for quick editing. You can remove the DWQA from page title and slug fields and then click on the ‘Update’ button to save your changes.
The next thing you need to do is to allow user registration on your website. This can be achieved by going to Settings » General page.
Scroll down to the ‘Membership’ section and check the box next to Anyone can register. Make sure that you choose Subscriber as the new user default role.
Now that user registration is enabled, let’s configure the plugin settings.
Start by going to Questions » Settings page. Under the General tab, you can configure the basic plugin settings.
First, you need to choose the page that will display the Ask Question form and another page that will List All Questions. You will notice that the default pages are already selected here.
If you want to display some other pages, then you need to copy and paste the shortcodes shown on the settings page to those pages.
Under the Question settings section, you can select the number of questions you want to be displayed on the questions page. You can also enable ‘Moderation’ by requiring each question to be manually approved.
The plugin also comes with built-in spam protection features. You can enable the Akismet anti-spam feature and provide the Akismet API key.
You can also use reCAPTCHA to protect your question and answer forum from automated spam bots.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Next, you need to switch to the ‘Email’ tab. From here you can upload your logo and modify the email notifications sent by the plugin.
After that, switch to the ‘Permissions’ tab. From here you can set up user role permissions. By default, the plugin allows administrators and editors to read, post, write and edit all questions and answers.
The plugin also allows anonymous users to ask questions. You can change that from permissions settings.
Once you are satisfied with plugin settings, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to save your changes.
Managing Your Question Answer Site
You can view all questions added to your site by visiting DW Q&A » All Questions page. As an administrator, you can edit or delete any questions submitted by any user on your site.
You can also add Question categories since users do not have permissions to create categories. However, users can add question tags when submitting a question on your site. To understand the difference check out our guide on Categories vs Tags.
The Front End Features of Your Q&A Site
DW Question Answers is designed to work with most WordPress themes. This is how your questions page will look:
Questions can be searched or sorted by status, categories, views, and answers. Your users post questions, submit answers, and add their own comments. Users can also follow questions by clicking on the star icon next to each question.
The user who has asked the question and the site administrator has the ability to mark a question as resolved. Users can also vote for answers, choose the best answer, and add comments to the questions and answers as well. This provides a much deeper interaction platform for your users to engage in discussions around the question topic.
This plugin is free and performs very well during our tests. There are several Question and Answer WordPress themes out there, but those lock you into using that theme forever.
The advantage of using a plugin is that you can switch your theme without losing any data.
We hope this article helped you build your own Q&A community on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to increase traffic on your new WordPress website.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Hi,
Which Theme we use for this Plugin…?
A specific theme is not required to use this plugin
After activating the plugin I am only getting DW Question Answer page.
The DWQA Ask Question page is not reflecting.
What am I mising over here?
If I’m understanding your question correctly, you may need to clear your cache if it is a display issue. If you mean you’re not able to list the questions then you would need to reach out to the plugin’s support.
How can I promote my questions and answers website.
For increasing your traffic you could take a look at our guide here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-increase-your-blog-traffic/
This article is very useful and informative …………..your way of writing is really easy and understandable I learn so much from your blog thanks for sharing such an informative article
Glad you like our content
Why this form of Q&A versus a traditional discussion forum such as BBPress? What are the pros and cons of each?
Bob
The main bonus of using the plugin from this article is the option to upvote specific answers while a forum is not required to answer questions. It is personal preference for what to use for what you’re trying to achieve.
Isn’t there any other way of creating such website? I mean without the use of a plugin?
While you could make something similar without using plugins, it would require a large number of customizations to make it a simple process for your users which the plugin allows.
Such a more valuable information. I also read your all Blogs. This is awesome!! I’ve always enjoyed reading your blog. Keep writing such kind of info on your page. I am really impressed with this type of writing. Thanks for sharing with us.
Glad you like our articles
This is helpful but when I generate a new question the formatting goes all wrong. I have a transparent header and menu and because the questions is generated on a white background I lose this visibility. Likewise as I edit a question page to make it look right as soon as I generate another question the format reverts back. How do I overcome this?
You would want to reach out to your specific theme to see if this is a conflict between your theme and the plugin.
Hello,
I would like to enable the option of adding comments and answers without a need to be logged in and without the requirement for an email address. How can I do it? Right now to add anything person needs to give the email.
Thanks in advance.
Anna
You would want to go into the plugin’s settings to allow anonymous posting or comments
I use a site that the questions asked come in the form of an email. I know postie plugin can convert the email to a post. Can any of the Q and A plugins accept” questions by email ?
We don’t have a specific one we would recommend at the moment but this method does give an option for your users to submit the questions through your site.
Very nice collections of question answer sites, i have found here best question answer site over my search experience. and also its great use for my question’s answer,thanks for sharing such a wonderful sites. thank you very much.
Glad our content could help answer your questions
Sir I can create a one website that is number of user ask IT question.and ans any user.please tell me about requirement to popular website.
I did not find any option to post the answer as an admin. Are they have any?
You can post your anser by visiting your Answer Questions Page link
Its not SEO friendly plugin even Youst Seo is not helpful to index in google of questions. i have convert my bbpress tp DWQA but i think its big mistake. its five days gone and there is 112 new questions but no any indexed in google but with bbpress any questions was indexed within 24-48 hrs. now any one can help me the way to convert DWQA to bbpress again? i am not a coder and its very difficult for me please any one help me :(:(
Hi Vikash
Did you receive any help in the end? I am trying to integrate BuddyPress with DW Questions & Answers but the recommended code
include_once get_template_directory().’/buddypress/bp-custom.php’;
is reporting errors.
Does this plugin support media upload
I had a website name. Now I want to create a page for the students where all question regarding maths, especially for engineering and other numerical questions well be in solved form.. can i use this plugin for numerical question or can i put HTML codes using this plugins? pls explain me . Thank you.
Please contact plugin author for support.
Hi sir ,
Can you please tell me some good free themes with this plugin to work .
Thank You ,
Zain
It should work great with default themes as well. Also check out these 43 beautiful free WordPress blog themes.
How to design my own template for questions and answers…?
Hi,
As I have checked on this plugin that user can login with the wordpress account only. is it possible i can modify it. so that people can login with their gmail, yahoo and other mail account also.
You can try login with Facebook.
i want to create a website for the students where all question regarding maths, statistics and other numerical questions well be in solved form.. can i use this plugin for numercal question or can i put HTML codes using this plugins?
@designwall Thanks for dropping by
Hi everyone,
Thanks WPBeginner for this awesome article about our DW Q&A plugin. We really appreciate it.
@Everyone who is using our plugin and facing any issue or having questions, please feel free to raise it at our Support page: http://www.designwall.com/question/
Our support staff will answer all the questions and issues.
Thanks a lot
Cheers,
Toolbar not work. Please help me
Does this plugin affect website loading time?
hello, is there any way to show particular page related question and answer using wp-answers plugin.
pls advice
thanks.
hello…my friend
tanx a lot for this post…
Vote option in Local working perfectly but in really host dont appear
I disabled all plugin but vote dont appear
please help me
please give me link how to set notification setting… with image
Awesome! I was going to spend $124 in the WP-Answers Pro plugin but I installed this and it is awesome. Any idea about how can I translate it? Thanks
DWQA has DWQA in the “DWQA Questions” literal. Where can this be changed? I didn’t find it in the php code.
I love this plugin very much. Very awesome!
Can I allow anonymous users to post a question without registering?
A very good post! I just instaled dwqa plugin, and I came here from a google search ” what theme should I use with dwqa plugin” I read the all post, I read it how to instal from dw guide original page, but tour post is better then their post :)). Good Job. Checking my site http:// Just kiding, this isn’t a spam comment :). Is my feedback
Does WordPress.com support downloading plugins and installing them? I saw that it doesn’t. Does that mean all the plugins that are mentioned are for wordpress.org?
Yes all the plugins mentioned here are for WordPress.org, please check out our guide on Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com
HELLO SIR THANKS WELL DONE
Thanks for this info
What is the main benefits with this (or this kind of) plugin compared with a forum plugin (like Simplepress) – apart that Q&A obviously is simpler to setup?
It depends on how you use a forum plugin. If you want to use it to create Q&A site, then you would need to set it up in a way so that your users can quickly understand what you want them to do. Using a Q&A specific plugin takes the guess work out of the equation and provides a better user experience.
I have also been looking for something like this. Have not installed yet, but it wasn’t clear if Q&A could be “viewed” without a login. I would want everyone to view the information but have a login to ask a question or answer. Could this be integrated with a plugin that allows login via Facebook, Twitter, acccount, etc.?
Great share I was looking something for free. There is a theme by wp-answer.com which allows importing of question and answers from Yahoo! answers.
how does this integrate with paid membership pro?
We tested it on default WordPress install. Check out plugin’s support forum to find out if it has any compatibility issue.
This plug in is perfect for my site. I followed your directions but the pages are not appearing on my site? Any suggestions on what might be wrong?
You can also create your own pages. Simply create two new pages and then go to plugin settings and use one page as Ask question page and the other page for listing questions.
very informative..
I had a Q&A page on our site for a while (plugin from WPMU) but it was constantly hit with spam. How does this plugin deal with it? Unchecking “anyone can register?” Then what?
According to plugin website they will soon release an update to the plugin which will enable captcha support.
Hi Mark,
DesignWall Team has updated the plugin and support reCAPTCHA from Google.
It also appears you need to use a redirect plugin.. after you submit a question you get a 404 page.
Ok, my mess up you need to leave permalinks at default.
No ,you don’t. Just update your permalink settings.
I was getting that 404 page too, and had to add forward slashes at the start of the permalinks.
@Debra Dalgleish
Just go to Dashboard >> Q&A >> Settings -> Permalink -> Save Changes.
You do not have to change anything just press “Save Changes”button at the bottom of the screen and the 404 issue will be resolved.
It would be nice if you could remove the questions category and tags option. Just have the title and question.
Wow, perfect timing, as I have been debating between a forum and this kind of a plugin for a new site. This helped make my decision
After installing and testing, I did find a couple minor bugs with the theme I am using, but this plugin is in it’s first version I believe, and that is bound to happen. Overall it looks great. Also, going through the support questions it sounds as if they are working on some more specific features as people ask questions or find issues. I see a great future for this plugin… cheers!