Tag Archives: stream

Use Dilmot to publish recurrent Q&A’s


We are proud to announce our new feature “duplicate stream“.

It copies all the configuration of a stream to a new one. It does not copy questions or comments, just the configuration items. This is very convenient for organising recurrent Q&A’s, for example, daily or weekly chats, because you save time: no need to set the name, image, avatar, twitter hashtag, etc every time. It does also copy the moderators authorised for the stream.

In order to use it, go to the list of streams and while you have the mouse on top of the line with the stream, you will see the option “duplicate” will show up, as you can see in the screenshot detail below:

Duplicate stream configuration

Duplicate stream configuration

 

A Free WordPress Theme to publish your live Q&A chats


We presented a while ago our new plugin to embed live Q&A chats in your web powered by WordPress.

In order to make your life easier, we are releasing a WordPress Theme that will help you to better organise the streams in your web. You can download it in this link

Live Q&A Portal for WordPress made with Dilmot WP Free Theme

Live Q&A Portal for WordPress made with Dilmot WP Free Theme

We have created a clean theme that can serve as a good basis for your customization. We recommend that, if you would like to make changes to it, you do it in a separate theme as a child-theme of Dilmot’s. In this guide you can learn how to create a child theme in WordPress.

The stylesheets are based on the Twitter Bootstrap design framework. You will be able to easily change the font and colours. Needless to say, that the theme is responsive, since that is the philosophy behind Bootstrap.

Are you ready to start with your Dilmot-powered Q&A chats? Drop us a line and we will help you to get it up and running.

Instructions manual for the administrator / moderator of a Dilmot Q&A stream


1. Login into the account
2. Create a stream
3. Access the stream
4. Verify data
5. Provide access data to the guest
6. Public page
7. Moderate
8. Guest instructions
9. Finish

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1. Login into the account

The account can be accessed through the login page:

https://www.dilmot.com/login

Login into your Dilmot account

Login into your Dilmot account

2. Create the stream

In the list of streams, you will see a button to create a new stream:

Click the new stream button to initiate the wizard

Click the new stream button to initiate the wizard

In a simple to follow wizard you will be able to enter all the relevant information. If you don’t have it at this point, no problem you can fill it in later on.

4-step wizard to create a new stream in Dilmot

4-step wizard to create a new stream in Dilmot

3. Access the stream

When you login into the account, you will see the list of streams, or if it is the first time you login, it will be empty.

List of streams presented in the account admin page

List of streams presented in the account admin page

When you click the stream you are interested in, you will see the admin page with the questions panel

Stream panel with questions

Stream panel with questions

Starting by the upper part of the page, you can see the title. Under the title, there is a link to see the public page, and another one to see the page used for the guest to respond.

On the right hand side there are 3 buttons:

Add question: We can add a question from here. The other way of doing so is from the public page, where the readers can send their questions.

Comment: This action is used to publish a message freely, this means, not related to any particular question. It is used for such things as writing a welcome message, a farewell message and any other messages that we wish to publish at any point.

Close Stream / Open Stream: While the stream is open (the default state when the stream is created) questions can be received and answered. When it is closed they can not either be received or answered.

In the stream panel, there are several tabs:

Incoming: this is where the incoming questions are seen.

Published: the answered questions will be shown here, as well as the comments made

Deleted: the place where the deleted questions remain.

In case you are managing a Pro account, you may moderate the questions that the guest will see. This is an option inside the settings page. When this option is selected, there will be an additional tab placed to the left:

Pending: these are received questions that the guest will not see unless the moderator (admin) approves them

On the right hand side, there is the button “Panel” pressed. There is also the option “Settings” where you can see the stream data.

4. Verify the stream data

Inside the settings page, we have the following items:

Stream information:

Title: This is the title that will display on top and that will be in the listings. Note that changing the title will change the url of the stream, so make sure you are spelling it correctly.

Description: Enter a brief description of what the Q&A will be about. Extension above 1000 characters will be hidden, but can be seen clicking the button “more”.

Date/Time: This option allows you to announce the date and time of the stream. This is an optional field. And if you decide to set a date/time, note that it will not change at all the way the application works. It is only an informative field.

Twitter: If you wish to receive questions from Twitter, you can choose the hashtag that will be used for importing the questions. For example, if you choose #questionsMrSmith all the tweets with that hashtag will be placed as incoming questions.

Numbering: Add a number to the question, that will be shown in the admin panel, in order to facilitate referring to questions.

Notifications: You can receive daily notifications or every time a question is received

Moderate questions: It allows to accept or reject questions that we would like the Guest to see in her panel. If this option is selected, the tab “Pending” will be shown in the panel, and the questions that have to be approved or rejected will be shown there.

Privacy: You can protect the stream with a password

Stream image: This is the image that will be shown on the header of the stream

Embed code: The stream can be embedded in another web, by simply inserting the html code provided.

Guest infomation: In this section, everything related to the guest will be shown. The guest is the person that will answer to the questions

Name: Put the name of the guest, if you leave it blank, her answers will appear as “guest”

Guest avatar: Image associated to each answer or comment done by the guest.

Access data for the guest: The secret link will allow the guest to access the panel to answer the questions. This link should only be shared with the person who will answer the questions. In order to do so, there is a simple way to send this link to the chosen e-mail, directly from the same page.

Stream settings page for a Dilmot Q&A

Stream settings page for a Dilmot Q&A

5. Provide access data to the Guest

In the section Guest information you can find the secret link that should be sent to the guest so she can access the guest panel and start answering.

6. Public page

The website readers will see the public page, from which they can send their questions and also follow the stream live, without the need of refreshing the browser.

In case the streams are not set as private (Pro account feature), they will be listed in the public page of the account:

http://xxxxxxxx.dilmot.com/ where “xxxxxxxxx” is the name of your account.

When they choose the stream they want to follow, the stream page will be similar to this one:

Form to send a question in Dilmot Q&A

Form to send a question in Dilmot Q&A

In case the stream is set as private, they will not be shown in the list. So you will have to notify the readers about the page where they have to login with the password you have predefined earlier in the settings page.

7. Moderate

Moderation panel for the Q&A stream

Moderation panel for the Q&A stream

In the tab “Incoming” you will see all the questions received. In case the stream is set in order to moderate the questions, then you will see an additional tab, “Pending” to the left of the “Incoming”. In the “Pending” you will find all the questions that have to be approved or rejected before they are shown to the guest and also to the public (if you have selected to show to the public questions before they are answered, which is a Pro account feature).

8. Guest instructions

As discussed earlier, the Guest will have to access with the secret url that the admin has to give her. Once the Guest clicks on the link, she will be led directly to the page we see below. It is a simpler version of the questions panel. There are only two tabs, “Incoming” and “Published”.

Guest view of the Q&A panel

Guest view of the Q&A panel

In the “Incoming”, the guest has to select to answer the question that she is going to answer, clicking on “Answer”. When she finishes answering, then click on “Save” so that the answer goes public.

The way the guest can answer a question in a Q&A

The way the guest can answer a question in a Q&A

Besides answering questions, the Guest may also add comments, by clicking on the button “Comment”. Comments can be used to write a welcome message, a farewell message or any other message they want to may public during the chat.

The Guest can also see the “Published” questions with the corresponding answer and if needed, edit the answer to correct typos or add anything forgotten.

The guest may also edit answers after they have been published

The guest may also edit answers after they have been published

9. Finish

If the stream has a set duration, you can, and it is encouraged to close the stream, so that the questions shown to the public get reordered in the oldest first order, so the stream can be read in the time sequence that it took place. If you decide to continue with the stream at any time, you can always open the stream again.

The guest can logout when the Q&A is finished

The guest can logout when the Q&A is finished

Publish on-line Q&A’s with Dilmot


The time has come to use an on-line software to organize and moderate interviews (Q&A’s) on your website or blog. Dilmot makes it very easy in only four steps

These are the instructions to get started with your Dilmot account:

Create an account

1 – Visit http://www.dilmot.com
2 – Select “Create Account”
3 – Choose your account name, e.g. “springfieldnews”
4 – You will receive an email and you have to click the link to confirm the account

Once you log in as administrator, you will notice that there are two items in the top menu: Streams and Account.

Dilmot top menu

Dilmot top menu

Account Settings

You may, as an option:
– upload an account logo
– upload an image (“avatar“) that will be used for the moderator/admin when she interacts in the stream chat
– put a description of what your account publications will be about (normally this can be the description of your medium)
– put the timezone

Dilmot account settings

Dilmot account settings

Create Q&A’s (Streams)

This web app is used to publish Q&A’s. In the application these are called “streams”. A stream is a sequence of questions and answers.

Each stream is held in a dedicated web page, where the readers will see the form to send their questions. Below the form, the Q&A will be published in real-time. No need to refresh the browser.

The Q&A can be embedded into other website. As a simple rule to remember, you just need to add the text “/embed” to the end of the url of the public stream, and you can use an iframe code like the example below:

<iframe src="http://mysubdomain.dilmot.com/streams/title-of-the-qna/embed"width="100%" height="800" scrolling="yes" frameborder="0"></iframe>

This iframe can be embedded into the page of WordPress, or any other content management system such as Joomla, Drupal, etc. And of course into any standard html website.

The cool thing about Dilmot is that you can manage a guest easily.

In the stream settings page, you may:

  • assign an image to the interview Q&A as well as to the guest (avatar). The difference is that the stream image will be shown in the lists of streams, and also next to the public form to send questions. The image assigned to the guest, or “guest avatar” will be shown next to the bubble where the guest responds. If there is no guest avatar set, then the stream image will be used as avatar, in reduced “thumbnail” size. If there is not even a stream image set, then a blank avatar will be shown.
  • For the guest to access the application and respond to the questions, you only need to send her the link that is given to you automatically by the application. You can find this link in the section “Guest information”. This is a secret link that has the password incorporated, so do not share it with anyone other than the person that will answer the questions.
Dilmot guest information section

Dilmot guest information section

Manage and moderate the interview Q&A

As soon as you create the stream you will be ready to receive questions from the readers. In the Panel page you will be able to delete the ones that the Guest should not be able to see.

When the Guest enters the application through the link that you have sent her, the only thing that she needs to do is click “answer”, type it and publish it. Besides answering the questions, it is also possible to write comments. This is useful, for example, to publish a welcome and farewell message.

The readers will see a page where they see on top the new questions, as they are being answered.

Once the administrator considers that the Q&A has come to an end, she can click “Close” stream. This can only be done by the administrator, not the Guest.

Once the stream is closed, the form used to send questions will disappear, and the questions will be sorted in reverse order, that is, the first one will be the oldest, like in a newspaper interview. On the other hand, while the Q&A is open, the last question published is shown on top, as if it was a Twitter stream.

One Q&A (stream) can last as long as you want. It can be open for hours, days, or months. It is a continuous thread of questions and answers. It can be used as a tool for live events, but you can also use it as an on-going page that is built along time.

After you close the interview, you may open it again at any time. And the form to send questions will reappear, and the sorting method will be again, “most recent answered question on top”.

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With this quick guide you will be able to publish your own interviews and Q&A’s, solve readers’ or clients’ questions, create faq pages or a forum with experts. It’s up to you what you would like to do with Dilmot!

And if you want to see further details, check out the Administrator and Moderator Manual for the Q&A

Should you have any question, please get in touch with us by writing a comment to this post or directly at http://www.dilmot.com/contact