Creating a Q&A site is the best way to engage with your audience and build a large community for your website. Q&A sites like Yahoo!, Reddit, and Quora receive tons of traffic every day as many people ask questions and browse for answers to expand their knowledge. In simple terms, Q&A sites are treasure houses for knowledge and community. However, bloggers running WordPress site often wonder, how can I build a Q&A section for my blog? The answer is Q&A plugins for WordPress.
Top 6 Q&A Plugins for WordPress
To make the process easy for you, we have selected the best Q&A plugins for WordPress you can use to add Q&A functionality to your site.
- DW Questions and Answer
- CM Answers
- AnsPress – Question and Answer
- WP Answers
- Sabai Discuss
- YITH WooCommerce Questions and Answers
You can use a WordPress question and answer plugin to create your own Quora or implement Q&A in different parts of your blog such as the comment section.
Caution Before Using Q&A Plugins
There are two big topics you need ensure before installing or purchasing Q&A plugins for your WordPress site.
- First is, do you have enough people to manage your Q&A section or site? You should understand that it is not possible for a single person to handle Q&A section covering different categories.
- Second is, do you have solid hosting for your WordPress site? Q&A plugins are resource intensive in nature and to handle lots of users on the site at any point of time. Therefore, ensure to have WPEngine, Kinsta, SiteGround VPS Cloud or premium version of Bluehost hosting.
1. DW Question and Answer
Build by DesignWall, DW Q&A is a powerful tool for creating a community-driven website with a fully-featured Q&A section like Quora and Yahoo Answers. With DW Q&A, your audience can ask questions, add answers to other questions, and browse through different questions by using search and filter options. The plugin provides further functionalities to let users comment and add replies to questions or answers, and vote for the best answers for their questions.
DW Q&A is available in both free and paid versions. You can upgrade to a Pro version anytime for $39. Pro users enjoy premium extensions which would otherwise cost around $100 to set up. The Pro version features include:
- Anti-spam using reCaptcha / FunCaptcha
- Markdown editor
- Support for up to 7 widgets, free version supports 4.
- Leaderboards to identify top contributors
- Instant email communication
- View counts
Some reviewers have raised compatibility concerns between the DW Q&A and other WordPress plugins and themes. The developers, however, are quick to offer support and feedback to any issues raised. With regular updates and support, you will not encounter so many issues when using the DQ Q&A plugin.
2. CM Answers
CM Answers is another Q&A plugin that comes in free and pro versions. The plugin lets you easily design a mobile-friendly and Q&A forum on your WordPress blog. The free version provides basic features such as moderating discussions, auto-approvals, and authorship permissions. The dashboard provides advanced sorting capabilities to view answers according to most responses, most user views, and top contributors.
You can upgrade to the Pro version starting from $39 for one site and $69 for 5 sites. The Pro edition ships with additional customization features and social media support. Advanced authorship permissions allow the admin to approve or dismiss irrelevant answers to keep the content 100% accurate. Other key features of the CM answers Pro include:
- BuddyPress integration
- Multiple attachments when posting questions and answers
- Replace the WordPress comment section on your blog with CMA answers
- Advanced access control
- Front-end text editor
One of the downsides of the CM answers is that you cannot customize your questions page. If your blog is “https://yoursite.com/”, the URL will be “https://yoursite.com/answers”. There is no way to customize it.
3. AnsPress – Question and Answer
AnsPress Q&A plugin is an open-source question and answer plugin for WordPress site. The plugin comes with many features and add-ons to build a light, mobile-friendly, and SEO optimized question and answer for free.
You can build a fully functional question and answer website like StackOverflow or implement a Q&A page on your WordPress site. Included in the plugin are free add-ons to organize questions in categories and tags for easy navigation. Despite the plugin being open source, it provides a range of useful features just like the CM Answers Pro. Some of the key features include:
- Featured questions
- Voting and counts
- Users can select Best Answer from the list of responses
- Built-in user profile
- Instant notifications for activities on your question and subscribed threads
- Upload media attachments
- Private Question & Answer
The AnsPress Q&A plugin, however, doesn’t receive regular updates and many users complain of problems when uninstalling the plugin. It may mess the site during uninstall.
4. WP Answers
The first WordPress plugin for question and answer system, the WP Answers is one of the best premium Q&A plugins in the market. The plugin lets you build a new community-driven Q&A website or embed a Q&A section on your existing blog. The plugin is available for $34.00 and there is no free version.
For starters, you can jumpstart your Q&A site with content form Stack Exchange and integrate with Facebook and Twitter for easy scaling and growth. The admin section allows you to reward the best users and use leaderboards to encourage participation. The plugin is mobile responsive and includes reCaptcha support for moderation and preventing spammers.
The only downside with the WP Answers is that there isn’t a free version, users have to purchase the premium version only.
5. Sabai Discuss
Sabai Discuss is another robust, premium Q&A plugin that ships with a lot of features to add a Q&A section to your WordPress site. You can do a lot with the Sabai Discuss plugin ranging from community-driven Q&A site to discussion forums, knowledge base, and helpdesk for your website. Available for $24 at Codecanyon, the plugin gives you a lot of flexibility and features not available in most Q&A plugins.
Some of the features of Sabai Discuss include access control feature to give roles and permissions to your users, report abuse system, voting engine, easy moderation to review flagged posts, and a reputation engine to identify the best contributors. Other features include:
- Markdown editor
- Social sharing tool
- Private and public Q&A functionality
- Advanced sort and filter
- Multiple attachments uploads
The Sabai Discuss Q&A plugin is an excellent tool for users and businesses who want to build all-round Q&A WordPress sites or webpages. The rich and amazing features, however, come with some perils. The plugin is heavy and may slow down your site. Some users also have complained about the lack of complete support for different languages.
6. YITH WooCommerce Questions and Answers
YITH WooCommerce Q&A plugin lets you embed a Q&A section on the product pages for your WooCommerce website. This is ideal as prospective users can review the answers when purchasing your product. You can start with a free plugin which provides core functionalities or upgrade to a premium version starting from $69.99.
The free version offers basic features such as a section for customers to ask questions and answers on the product page. Admin can also extract the responses and create a FAQ section. The Pro version offers advanced options to add more flexibility and control to your product page. You can choose the number of questions to be displayed and instant email notification. Users can vote for the best answers and use them to show credibility for your product.
Other additional features include abuse reporting, reCaptcha options, and sort and filter features. The downsides of this plugin include fewer features compared to the other plugins and limited to only product pages.
Conclusion
Q&A plugins are the best tools for increasing the community for your site and creating a knowledge base for many online users. It’s important to identify the requirements of your website before selecting the ideal Q&A plugin. Some of the features to look out for include voting, question and answer listing, access control, moderation, and social media support. You can start with one of our top 6 Q&A plugins for WordPress to build an effective Q&A website or implement a Q&A section in your existing WordPress site. We remember you to go with Q&A plugins instead of struck with Q&A themes like Discy. Alternatively, you can add separate questions and answers section on your subdirectory or subdomain outside WordPress installation.
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