Tag Archives: Drupal

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”.

***

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

Best blogging platforms


Blogging platforms have been out there for many years, but they keep evolving. We have taken a quick look at what is the last shout and how the classic platforms are evolving

Blogging platforms

Thinking about launching a blog?

WordPress

One of the senior platforms out there. It was born as a blog editing software, but today is much more than that. There is a large network of active blogs in http://www.wordpress.com and you can host yours for free. It is also available as an open source software so you can have your own site hosted in a simple server. The pros and cons of a self-hosted blog with wordpress is analysed in this post.

For example, this blog is hosted privately but uses WordPress software to power it.

Blogger

Blogger was acquired by Google, so now you can count with a lot of help from Google to promote this platform.

Tumblr

Why use Tumblr? this platform was born to declutter the complexity that was arising in the existing blogging platforms. With Tumblr everything is easier and the themes you can use are definitely nicer.

Comparing the 3 main hosted platforms

There are some good comparisons of these three platforms, and we recommend you have a look at them:

Quoting one of them “Whereas WordPress is best suited for professional users who want to outfit their blog with upgrades and plugins, Tumblr finds grounding in quick, community-driven posts usually lined with images. And Blogger walks the middle ground between the two with a sheer level of simplicity and easy-to-use use design anyone can master.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/wordpress-vs-tumblr-vs-blogger

https://www.udemy.com/blog/blogger-vs-wordpress-vs-tumblr/

Newer, alternative blogging platforms

But if you are looking at new stuff that is coming and that may become the new WordPress of this world, have a look at these platforms:

Silvrback: it has an amazing clean design

Ghost: similarly to WP, it can be self-hosted or hosted in their servers.

Roon: because sometimes you would like to do things differently…

Medium: you will need to use a Twitter of Facebook account in order to use Medium.

Svbtle: Positioned as a magazine type of blogging platform.

https://medium.com/blogging-and-seo-tips/d62682d9b0aa

Web participation tools: Comments, Forums, Chats, Q&As, on-line interviews…


Opening our web to participation enriches the content and helps us to create loyal readers who will come back more often (user engagement). This article will discuss the different possibilities of participation and some of the tools available

Normally we want our websites to be alive, and display updated, fresh content. Many customers that have hired me to build a website for them hope that to have a website published makes getting clients and business contacts something automatic, like magical. The reality is that a website requires heavy maintenance and updating, and I do not mean here technical aspects, that are obviously essential. I’m talking about generating content, engage audiences and give them the opportunity to participate.

Web participation can be offered in different ways.

Comments. Following an article we can allow users to comment on it. This option can be moderated or unmoderated. Moderation makes the comments less dynamic and includes a factor of “censorship” that can arouse suspicions among readers. But on the other hand, it is true that there are plenty of trolls willing to insult and be disrespectful, hiding behind the anonymity. Freedom of speech has limits.
Web Applications Reviews: Virtually every type Publishing Solutions such as Blogging Platforms, and CMS (Content Management System) facilitate this option:

Besides, there are other independent on-line platforms that can be configured into any web (embedding the comments)

Discussion Forums. Unlike comments, in the case of discussion forums it is the users who initiate the topics for discussion. Usually Forums are used to query and gather feedback from other users who may have more experience than us in any matter. They are also subject to the same problems of moderation and may also have queries or responses with undeclared interests, e.g. hidden marketing activity. Normally they do need to have moderators. In many occasions they are very active users in which we delegate power to moderate.

Chats. In this system users communicate in real time, i.e. comments are posted live, as if it were a talk. Chat systems are booming, especially since the chats have become popular in mobile phones with solutions like WhatsApp Telegram.

On-line Q&A An on-line Q&A is a way of holding a session of questions and answers with a guest speaker. It can also be seen as an interview in which we can open the question turn to the floor. It is a form of popular participation among the on-line newspapers and magazines. Also for corporate communications and content marketing online. It is used both for chats with celebrities and to talk with experts or personalities. There are tools for organising the Q&A sessions both with chat and video:

Click here if you would like to know more about how to publish a live Q&A