WordPress is powering 30% from the web and in these conditions is one of the best CMS that you can use to build your Q&A website. In this article, I will like to show you how you can build a Q&A website like Quora with WordPress. We will see what exactly is needed to have the Q&A website built and at the end some videos that you can follow to have the website built from scratch.

Why Use WordPress for Your Q&A Website

Besides the fact WordPress is the most used CMS there is also other reasons to use it for your Q&A website, some of reasons are:

• Not Expensive – WordPress is free but the themes and plugins that you will use to build the Q&A website will cost some money. Don’t worry they are affordable and costs under 100$.
• Large Community – there is a large community that is developing for WordPress in case you need some customization you will find easy someone to help you. In case you want some training to learn WordPress you can find a lot online.
• Extend WordPress With Functionality – in case you want to extend your Q&A website with other features like capturing leads, sell something, do a membership you can do it easily with WordPress as you can use 3PP plugins.
• Easy Maintenance – WordPress can be maintained very easily if you know what you are doing or you can hire someone very cheap to help you.
• No Code Needed – you can build your Q&A without any code and the layout is responsive (mobile friendly)

Challenges When Using WordPress

WordPress is great but there are also some challenges that you should know about before diving in and building your Question and Answer ( or next Quora ) site on it.

• Hackers Target – because it is so widely used there are a lot of hackers that are targeting it. Also, plugins that you may use can have vulnerabilities. You need to properly secure WordPress and back it up periodically. For help with this, you can check: Best WordPress Security Plugins and How To Backup WordPress
• Use A lot Of Plugins – to extend the functionality of your next Quora site you may be forced to install different plugins and they may slow down your site and make it more vulnerable to attacks.

How to Build a Question and Answer Website With WordPress

Next, let’s dig into what is needed to have a good Question and Answer Website on WordPress. Below are the steps and tools you need to have the perfect Q&A website built.

Step 1: Get Some Good Hosting

Everything starts with good hosting. Is very important that your website be fast, just think about what will happen if, for instance, Quora will take forever to load, no one will want to use it and you will have a useless site. So everything starts with the hosting. There are some good hosting alternatives that you can use and I am recommending, so you can choose:

Shared Hosting

This type of hosting is easy to use and will make everything easy. With shared hosting, you have cPanel to configure everything, with only a couple of clicks you can install WordPress or have your emails set up. The best-shared hosting that you can use is SiteGround. It is offering packages starting from a couple of $ a month. For more, you can check How to Start a WordPress Blog on SiteGround

Self Hosting

This hosting alternative is more complicated and it implies doing everything yourself. This is not something that everyone can do as it needs advanced technical knowledge. The main advantage of self-hosting is that is offers very good performance at low prices with 5$ a month you can have a VPS where you can host multiple sites. The best self-hosted alternative is DigitalOcean, you have some articles below that can help you get going:

• DigitalOcean Review
• How to Install Virtualmin on CentOS 7 With PHP 7 and NGINX
• Install EasyEngine On Ubuntu 18.04 With PHP 7.2

Step 2: Get A Domain Name

A domain name is an actual name that your visitors will use to access the Q&A website. A domain name is something like quora.com. If you are going to use SiteGround then you have the option to register a name thru them. Otherwise, you need to use a domain registrant and point the name servers to the hosting server. One of the best domain registrants that you can use is NameCheap it is having decent prices and you can register domains from many TLD like com, org, net, dev, co, etc.

Step 3: Choose the best Q&A theme or Plugin

There are a few Q&A themes and plugins developed for WordPress the idea is to choose something you like and has the functionalities you want. Most of them are responsive (mobile ready) and have some interesting designs that are very appealing. Some of the best Q&A themes that you can use are Discy and QAEngine for a complete list you can check: Best WordPress Q&A Themes and Plugins.

Another option is to use a plugin and add a section for Q&A for your blog. DW Question & Answer Pro – WordPress Plugin is the best plugin to use.

Step 4: Install/Configure the Q&A Theme and Plugin

After you decide on what theme and plugin to use for your Q&A website you need to install and properly configure the theme or plugin. The installation of the choose option can be done from the dashboard with Add Theme or Add Plugin. Best way to configure the Q&A theme or plugin is to follow a video tutorial. Below are 2 video tutorials that will help you create the Q&A website from scratch or a Q&A section to an existing website:

Step 5: What’s Next

At this point it should have your Q&A website or section ready and next you should think on:

Optimizing WordPress for SEO – SEO is a good source of traffic and having good SEO optimization can make all the difference. To optimize WordPress for SEO you can check: WordPress SEO Tutorial – How To Optimize WordPress For The Best SEO

Backup your Site – Backing up your site is very important. My site was hacked several times by now and if not had a good backup I would have lost everything. To help you with the backup you can check: How To Backup a WordPress Site Automatically For Free