WordPress Questions and Answers + Experts Add-on (CMAE) + Payments Add-on (CMAP) - Use Case - How To Create a Paid and Confidential Forum With Experts

Use Case - How To Create a Paid and Confidential Forum With Experts

Introduction

The WordPress Questions and Answers in combination with the Experts add-on allow you to create a WordPress Discussion Forum with experts assigned to each question. 

The system can support multiple experts, which are assigned to one or multiple categories. Once a user posts a new question to a specific category, the first expert to accept the question will be the one to manage and to answer it.

The Payments add-on allows to charge users for asking questions.

Use Case Front-End

Dashboard for Users / Experts / Admins:

Asking question and assigning it to the expert:

Editing and managing a user question as an expert:

Admin statistics:

Use Case Assumptions

In this example use case guide, we'll cover how to assign experts to categories, hide info about question authors, how to charge for asking questions, limit the amount of answers per user and a lot more.

You can apply the same idea to any type of WordPress discussion forum.

We consider that you have already bought the plugin and add-ons, but not installed them yet.

It follows:

• Installing the plugin
• Installing payment plugin (EDD or WooCommerce)
• Quick recap
• Basics - user roles
• Assigning expert to forum category
• Ask the expert settings
• Disabling info about question authors
• Limiting amount of answers and comments per user under each question
• Notifications settings
• Payments settings
• Front-end interface
  • Dashboard - admin vew
  • Dashboard - expert view
  • Dashboard - user view
• Forum index page - user view
• Expert view - accepted question
• Admin statistics - back-end
• End result
• Extra - importing forum data from third-party plugin

Installing the Plugin

The process is the same for all CM plugins and add-ons.

• Download the add-on from your customer dashboard.
• Log in to WordPress and navigate to the WordPress Admin  → Plugins settings.
• Click on Add New.
• Activate it and add the license.

Learn more: Getting Started - Installation And First Steps

Installing Payment Plugin (EDD or WooCommerce)

You must choose between either Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce.

Head to Admin Dashboard → Plugins → Installed Plugins and click Add New. 

Search for either Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce and install it.

Configure Payment Plugins

Don't forget to configure the payment plugin! This way you can connect it to payment providers such as PayPal or credit card companies.

External Resources

• Introduction to EDD - Easy Digital Downloads
• Configuring WooCommerce Settings - WooCommerce Docs

In this use case we are going to use EDD, but it works the same for WooCommerce.

Basics - User Roles

The Experts Add-on involves three user roles (learn more about user roles):

1. Administrator - Can view all questions, assign a question to a specific expert, make a question private or public and review system statistics. Can also make any regular user into an expert by defining him as such for a specific forum category. The user's role will be changed to expert.
2. Expert - Experts are defined on per category basis. An expert can be assigned to more than one category. Once assigned to a forum category he/she is able to see the Expert dashboard and accept questions.
3. User - Any registered WordPress user is able to post a question and decide if it should be public or private. If private, he/she needs to select the forum category to which the question is posted. All experts assigned to this category will see this question and the first to accept it will be able to answer it.

Assigning Expert to Forum Category

The admin can assign experts to categories on the back-end. To do this, navigate to Admin Dashboard → CM Answers Pro → Categories and Experts.

You can assign users to a category either while creating or editing the category under the option Select experts. On the right side of the screen you can see the list of existing categories. For each category you can see a list of assigned experts in the relevant column.

Ask the Expert Settings

Now let's explore some of the plugin settings that we need. We will start from the settings of the Ask the Expert add-on. To find them, as an admin navigate to Admin Dashboard → CM Answers Pro → Settings → Experts Addon tab. There are a few sections with options.

First section we need is General. We are going to consider the following settings:

• Show unanswered questions only to experts – While this option is enabled, the question will not be visible to regular users (question authors) until there’s at least 1 answer (even if the question has a “Public” status). If it is enabled, the question author cannot add any answers to his question until the expert answers it. Also, if the expert didn’t answer the question, but marked it as "Resolved" and switched the question status to “Public”, the question will not be visible to regular users (question authors), as it doesn’t have any answers.
• Allow experts and admin to modify questions – This option allows admins and experts to edit on the front-end questions, answers and comments asked by regular users.
• Allow mark public visible only resolved questions – The question cannot be switched to the “Public” status until it is marked as “Resolved” by the question author, expert or admin. After it is marked as "Resolved", there cannot be posted any more answers under this question.
• Show answer author if it was added by expert – The plugin allows to hide all info about forum users (we will consider it further in this use case guide). If you want to hide info about regular users, but still want to display the info about experts, you can enable this option.
• Show experts statistics on the frontend – Enable this option to show the tab "My Statistics" in the Expert Dashboard (we will consider this dashboard mode detailed further in this use case guide).

Next section is Question Form. Here are a few options that we will consider:

• Default question visibility and Allow to change the question visibility – We configured these 2 options in the way so when the forum user posts a question, it cannot be published as “Public” question, and can be visible only to experts and admin.
• Allow user to assign a question to specific expert – While this option is enabled, when the user chooses a question category, he is able to choose an expert for answering the question.
• Allow experts to resolve questions – While this option is enabled, the experts are allowed to mark questions as “Resolved”, consequently, the expert will be able to switch the question to the “Public” status.

There is also a section Dashboard. There are 3 options which allow you to configure the dashboard colors:

• Dashboard background color
• Tab background color
• Active tab background color

Disabling Info About Question Authors

Now we will go through some of the settings of the main plugin.

Under the Appearance tab, you can find the section Table of questions. There is an option Show information about the author of a question. We disabled it, so the question author info will not be displayed on the index page of the forum.

And under the section Thread page there are 3 similar options:

• Show question author
• Show answer author
• Show comment author

These settings relate to the appearance of the author info on the question page. We also disabled them.

Limiting Amount of Answers and Comments Per User Under Each Question

Under the Access and moderation tab, you can find the section Moderation. There is an option Limit of answers/comments by user. For the current use case we set the value “3”, so each user cannot post more than 3 answers and comments in total under each question.

Notifications Settings

Now we are going to configure email notifications - who can receive them and edit email templates.

Under the Notifications tab, we will consider 2 sections.

Under the section New questions, you can choose, who should receive email notifications – admin, question author and experts.

• Enable notification for admin - If enabled, the notification about new question will be send to the email addresses defined above.
• Enable notification for experts - If enabled, experts will be notified about new questions in their categories. You can define experts per each category.
• Which experts should be notified - You can choose between:
  • Notify all experts in category - All experts will be notified about new questions in their categories.
  • Notify only assigned expert - Only chosen expert will be notified. If the expert was not selected then all experts in the category will get a notification.
• Notify question author - Send a notification email to the author of the question about processing the question.
• Subject of the notification email for author - Author of the question will receive a notification email with this subject.
• Content of the notification email for author - Author of the question will receive a notification email with this content. The email body supports the following placeholders:
  • [blogname] - Name of the site.
  • [author] - Author of the question.
  • [question_title] - Title of the question.
  • [question_body] - Body of the question.
  • [question_status] - Approval status of the question (pending, approved).
  • [question_link] - URL address of the new question.
• Subject of the notification email - Category subscribers and admin will receive a notification email with this subject.
• Content of the notification email - Category subscribers and admin will receive a notification email with this content. The email body supports the following placeholders:
  • [blogname] - Name of the site.
  • [author] - Author of the question.
  • [ip] - Author IP address.
  • [question_title] - Title of the question.
  • [question_body] - Body of the question.
  • [question_status] - Approval status of the question (pending, approved).
  • [question_link] - URL address of the new question.
  • [opt_out_url] - URL address of the opt-out page (if enabled).

You can find similar options under the section New answers. You can choose who should receive email notifications and configure email templates.

• Enable notification for admin - If enabled, the notification about new answer will be send to the email addresses defined above.
• Notify experts - Send notification email to experts after a new answer will be posted.
• Notify question author - Send notification email to question author after a new answer will be posted.
• Subject of the notification email - Subscribers and admin will receive a notification email with this subject. (Subscribers are users who have checked the "Notify me of follow" option or following the question thread or whole category.
• Content of the notification email - Subscribers and admin will receive a notification email with this content. The email body supports the following placeholders:
  • [blogname] - Name of the site.
  • [question_title] - Title of the question.
  • [question_body] - Body of the question.
  • [comment_link] - Link to the new answer.
  • [question_author] - Name of the question author.
  • [author] - Name of the answer author.
  • [ip] - Author IP address.
  • [answer] - Answer body.
  • [opt_out_url] - URL address of the opt-out page.
• Subject of the notification email for experts - Experts will receive a notification email with this subject.
• Content of the notification email for experts - Experts will receive a notification email with this content. The email body supports the following placeholders:
  • [blogname] - Name of the site.
  • [question_title] - Title of the question.
  • [question_body] - Body of the question.
  • [comment_link] - Link to the new answer.
  • [question_author] - Name of the question author.
  • [author] - Name of the answer author.
  • [ip] - Author IP address.
  • [answer] - Answer body.
  • [opt_out_url] - URL address of the opt-out page.
• Subject of the notification email for author - Author will receive a notification email with this subject.
• Content of the notification email for author - Author will receive a notification email with this content. The email body supports the following placeholders:
  • [blogname] - Name of the site.
  • [question_title] - Title of the question.
  • [question_body] - Body of the question.
  • [comment_link] - Link to the new answer.
  • [question_author] - Name of the question author.
  • [author] - Name of the answer author.
  • [ip] - Author IP address.
  • [answer] - Answer body.
  • [opt_out_url] - URL address of the opt-out page.

Payments Settings

Head to the Payments tab.

First of all, under the section General, you need to choose a Payment provider in the relevant option. It will show you only those payments plugins, which are installed and activated on your site (either EDD or WooCommerce).

In the next section Posting questions, we need the following settings:

• Enable charging user when posting a question - Turn on this option to start charging users for posting questions on your forum.
• EDD/WooCommerce product - Here you need to choose a pre-made product in either EDD or WooCommerce. This is how you define the price for charging questions.

Don't forget to click the button Update to save the changes.

Front-end Interface

We finished with configuring the plugin settings. Now let's check the front-end part.

Our plugin provides a dashboard, which works similarly for each user type (admin, expert and user), but has some difference in its tabs.

The dashboard can be displayed on any post or page of your site using the shortcode [cmaexp-dashboard] .

Dashboard - Admin View

The admin can see 3 tabs in his dashboard.

All Questions

Here the admin can see and manage all questions on the forum - assign and remove from experts, change categories, answer, resolve and make questions public.

Categories and Experts

In this tab, the admin can see the list of all categories, which experts assigned to each category, and short statistics about questions.

Admin Statistics

Last tab in the admin dashboard also shows the statistics, but a bit more detailed per each expert.

Dashboard - Expert View

The expert can see 4 tabs in his dashboard.

Questions to me

Here the expert can see and manage questions which are assigned to him, to his category, or if the question is "Public".

Categories and Experts

Next tab is the same as for the admin - it shows info about categories statistics. The only difference is that the expert can see the amount of Unanswered answers only in categories that he is assigned to. It is because of the option Show unanswered questions only to experts which we enabled in the add-on settings.

Edit Profile

In this tab, the expert can add some extra info about him.

My Statistics

In the last tab, the expert can see his statistics - how many questions are still Opened for him, and how many are Closed (marked as "Resolved"). The expert can also filter his statistics using the relevant settings.

Dashboard - User View

The regular user (question author) can see 4 tabs in his dashboard.

My Questions

Here the user can see all questions which were created only by him.

Categories and Experts

Here the user can see info about categories and experts.

Ask a question

Under this tab, the user can see a form for submitting questions - the same form we display on the forum index page, so the user has a choice, where it is more convenient for hib for ask a question.

Edit Profile

Last tab is similar to the one that experts have, but without the area for contact details. As we disabled displaying user info on the forum, we don't need this tab for our use case.

Forum Index Page - User View

On the forum index page, the regular user can see questions created by him and Public questions (which are asked by other users). The user can only see a form for submitting a question.

The user can add a question and its detailed description, choose a category and an expert.

As the question is paid, the user will be redirected to the Checkout page.

And after purchasing the product, it will be published and visible for admin and assigned expert. All participants will receive email notifications.

Expert View - Accepted Question

The expert can see and manage the question assigned to him.

When visiting the question page, the admin can edit it.

The expert can either can change the question or cancel editing. The same button Edit will be displayed for user answers and comments.

According to our settings, this question cannot be displayed to other users and to experts which are not assigned to this category.

Let's publish the answer as an expert:

Now let's mark it as "Resolved".

And then turn it to the "Public" state.

Now this question can be visible to all user on the forum index page, but no one can add any answers to this anymore.

Admin Statistics - Back-end

Another feature that the Experts add-on has is admin statistics.

To find it, navigate to Admin Dashboard → CM Answers Pro → Statistics.

The admin can see there the statistic about Opened and Closed questions - in total and per each expert. The admin can also filter the results using relevant settings.

End Result

Following instructions found in the plugin and guides, you should be able to create a paid and confidential forum with experts.

Use Case Front-End

Dashboard for Users / Experts / Admins:

Asking question and assigning it to the expert:

Editing and managing a user question as an expert:

Admin statistics:

Extra - Importing Forum Data From Third-Party Plugin

If you have a CM Answers Convertor add-on, you can convert the existing forum data base from a third-party plugin to our plugin.

Head to the Converting page in the plugin menu:

On that page, click the button Start Converting and wait for results.

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