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Hi there,

In our B2B community (mostly focused on customer service, feedback & knowledge sharing) we never had a category for community topics (e.g. community welcome, announcements, introductions, etc.). Those subcategories were nested under the general Questions Category.

We are now planning to implement a new category just for community-related stuff.

  1. Does anybody have any best practices on how to structure that category?

We were thinking the following subcategories

  • Get Started (Topics on how to use the community)
  • Community News (Announcements etc.)

Secondly, does anybody here advise for or against having those categories as a Knowledge Base?

Since we have a separate Knowledge Base for our software, we are currently not using inSided’s KB. Might be a good idea to use that as a community guide instead?

Looking forward to hear your thoughts!

@Scott Baldwin, I see you have a brilliant example of using a knowledge base for your Welcome Area (→ “Community Overview). looks really cool!

We might do something similar, but we might also nest the “News and Announcements” within the Knowledge Base Area.

My question for you now would be: is there a reason why you have the “News and Announcements” in the Community Categories instead of the Knowledge Base?

 


@Daniele Cmty I think one of the risks of using Knowledge Base for this is the fact you are closing that door for the future of using the InSided Knowledge Base for its original purpose. But one could argue that it fits nicely in a separate sub category of the Knowledge base if you wanted to scale that way.

I decided to attempt not doing this and instead have created a conditional HTML widget based on the user’s rank (lower ranks) so that once a user is more familiar with the community the real estate used up by this “Getting started” type content is spared/ re-used for other content.

Having said that I have not launched yet, so I my approach is a best guess whereas @Scott Baldwin has been at it a little longer and might have chosen this approach for reasons I haven’t encountered yet. It might also be worth evaluating how familiar your audience is with the idea of the community/ forums…

Great question!


@Daniele Cmty we have News & Announcements in the Community as we felt that was a better pace for it. The KB is how to use our community and contains our code of conduct, policies, info about our team, and how-to guides for commonly asked questions. 
 

@SmartlyGreg we keep our Productboard KB in Zendesk and federate that, so would never need to have a product KB in inSided. Rather than just housing the above community KB in a category, we elected to use this approach. 


Thank you both for your answers!

 

@SmartlyGreg I think one of the risks of using Knowledge Base for this is the fact you are closing that door for the future of using the InSided Knowledge Base for its original purpose.

Just like @Scott Baldwin, That won’t be a concern since we have been using a completely different tool for our Knowledge Base for a long time, and are probably not going to switch to inSided for that.

 

 @SmartlyGreg  I decided to attempt not doing this and instead have created a conditional HTML widget based on the user’s rank (lower ranks) so that once a user is more familiar with the community the real estate used up by this “Getting started” type content is spared/ re-used for other content.

Wow, that’s really cool! Would you mind sharing it with the community? 😇

 

@Scott Baldwin  we have News & Announcements in the Community as we felt that was a better pace for it. The KB is how to use our community and contains our code of conduct, policies, info about our team, and how-to guides for commonly asked questions. 

Yup, that makes sense - thank you for clarifying!

Context: I was asking just in case there were any “limitations” within the KB module that made you choose to go for a subcategory, but I understand that in case it’s just a matter of personal preference, which totally makes sense.



Also curious to hear what others in the Community have to say :)


@Daniele Cmty I did already actually here: 

Let me know if any questions! :)


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