Best practices for managing your help center community

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">When you first launch a community in your help center, you might consider taking some basic steps and enabling certain features to help guide your users and make managing your community easier.</p>
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<p class="p">When you first launch a community in your help center, you might consider taking some
basic steps and enabling certain features to help guide your users and make managing
your community easier.</p>
<div class="p">This article contains the following sections:<ul class="ul" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__ul_d3c_4vb_1kb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_awn_4vb_1kb">Writing a community code of conduct</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_exr_b1c_1kb">Setting up content moderation filters</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_udd_2bc_1kb">Creating moderator groups and setting permissions</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_bj1_1cc_1kb">Creating your first few topics</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_jnh_ycc_1kb">Writing pinned "how to" and welcome posts in each topic</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_fn4_sdc_1kb">Customizing your theme</a></li>
</ul>
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<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_awn_4vb_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Writing a community code of conduct</h2>
<p class="p">Before you launch your community, it’s important to write down what the rules of the
space will be. This helps users to understand how to participate in your community,
and what kinds of things won't be allowed.</p>
<p class="p">In addition to letting users know the things you might not want them to do in the
community, for example, posting spam or harassing others, also consider things such
as:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__ul_jn4_bvb_1kb">
<li class="li">Is it ok for people to promote their business or solicit other users to contact
them outside of your site?</li>
<li class="li">Are there terms, phrases, or certain kinds of activity that will not be allowed
in your community?</li>
<li class="li">If a user violates any of the rules, how will they be enforced? It’s good to
explain to users what will happen if they violate the code of conduct.</li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Post the code of conduct in your community, and consider pinning it to the top of a
topic. It should be easy for users to find and refer to.</p>
<p class="p">It’s important to revisit your code of conduct regularly, and make adjustments to the
rules as required. If you have a legal team as a part of your organization, you
might want to include them in the process or get their approval.</p>
<p class="p">Here’s the <a class="xref" href="https://community.zendesk.com/get-started-134/code-of-conduct-21271" target="_blank">Zendesk Community Code of Conduct</a> as an
example. </p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_exr_b1c_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Setting up content moderation filters</h2>
<p class="p">We recommend using the content moderation feature to help avoid spam and other
inappropriate or abusive posts being published in your community.</p>
<p class="p">You can choose whether you want to moderate all posts, or just those matching certain
keywords. You’ll need to evaluate which option will be best for your community,
depending on the kind of audience you’ll be engaging, the size and capabilities of
the team you have managing your community, and how much of a risk is posed by spam
in your community.</p>
<p class="p">Moderating all posts can be very effective in eliminating any spam from getting
through. However, it is best to use this feature only if you have a team that can be
highly responsive in approving posts (that is, they can log in and approve content
whenever a notification is received, or periodically during your community’s most
active hours), or if your community is one that does not require speedy responses.
This is because when the content is pulled into the moderation queue, the user has
to wait for a Guide Manager to approve the post before it goes live, which can lead
to a significant lag between when a user tries to make a post and when it actually
appears in the community. </p>
<p class="p">Using the keyword function allows you to specify words that, when they’re present in
a post, trigger the post to go into the moderation queue to be reviewed, and then
either approved or rejected by a Guide Manager. This means that posts without any of
the keywords are published immediately, which is preferable for a community trying
to foster high conversational engagement. However, this option does run the risk of
allowing some spam posts through on occasion, until the spam filter learns or a new
keyword is added to the filter. </p>
<p class="p">See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894193562-Moderating-end-user-content" target="_blank">moderating end-user content</a> to learn more
about content moderation for your Help Center.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_udd_2bc_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Creating moderator groups and setting permissions</h2>
<p class="p">The community moderator feature enables you to assign certain permissions to groups
of users (agents and end-users), so that they can assist your community managers to
moderate the community.</p>
<p class="p">Identify a group of trusted users or agents, and give them the ability to flag posts
for moderation, so that they can help hide anything that shouldn’t be in your
community or flag questionable content for your community managers to review.</p>
<p class="p">There are a variety of permissions that you can give to these groups, and you can set
up multiple groups with different sets of permissions. To learn more, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882973338-Creating-community-moderator-groups" target="_blank">creating community moderator groups</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_bj1_1cc_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Creating your first few topics</h2>
<p class="p">Start by creating two or three topics in your community. More than three topics can
spread your users across too many spaces, especially when launching a new
community.</p>
<div class="p">To determine what your initial topics should be, you should consider:<ul class="ul" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__ul_ef1_ncc_1kb">
<li class="li">Your goals for the community</li>
<li class="li">What your customers or users are most interested in talking about</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="p">It can be helpful to look at support tickets that you already receive. See what
areas come up most often, then create a topic in your community for users to discuss
that topic. Your topics should be specific enough that users know what they’re
supposed to do when they get there, but broad enough to apply to a wide variety of
users.</p>
<p class="p">Fill in the description field for your topics, to help users understand what they’re
supposed to post.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_jnh_ycc_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Writing pinned "how to" and welcome posts in each topic</h2>
<p class="p">In addition to the topic description, it is helpful to write a <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408823846170#topic_fm4_s1x_ds" target="_blank">pinned post</a> to explain to users what the
space is for and how to best use it. If the code of conduct tells your users what
not to do, this post tells them what you <strong class="ph b">do</strong> want them to do.</p>
<p class="p">This step is especially helpful if you want to encourage users to post in a specific
format, include specific information in their post, or use voting in a specific
way.</p>
<p class="p">For example, your topic might be set up for users to share recipes. You want them to
follow a format of listing the ingredients first and the recipe instructions
second. You might also want them to vote on their favorite recipes. While this might
seem intuitive, it will be helpful to explain what you want them to do.</p>
<p class="p">Another example might be collecting product feedback, where you want to encourage
users to post which version of a product they’re using and answer some specific
questions in their post.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__section_fn4_sdc_1kb">
<h2 class="title sectiontitle">Customizing your theme</h2>
<p class="p">As a bonus, consider customizing your community's theme to make your new community’s
look and feel match the rest of your website or brand. A common theme can help your
users feel more at home and connected to the other ways they connect with your
organization online.</p>
<p class="p">The help center theme is highly customizable. There are a number of free and paid
themes available in the <a class="xref" href="https://www.zendesk.com/marketplace/themes/" target="_blank">Zendesk Marketplace</a>. You can also get help
with customizations by asking questions in the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics" target="_blank">Zendesk Community</a>.</p>
<div class="p">Here are some other useful links for customizing your theme:<ul class="ul" id="topic_dbx_z5b_1kb__ul_fwb_3mc_1kb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408839332250-Customizing-the-Help-Center#topic_v2m_5tg_kn" target="_blank">Customizing your Help Center
theme</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408842914714-Help-Center-CSS-cookbook" target="_blank">Help Center CSS Cookbook</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://developer.zendesk.com/apps/docs/help-center-templates/introduction" target="_blank">Help Center Templates
Introduction</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836487450-Help-Center-JavaScript-cookbook" target="_blank">Help Center Javascript
Cookbook</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408829627930-Tips-for-using-HTML-to-customize-your-knowledge-base-in-Help-Center" target="_blank">Tips for using HTML to customize your
Help Center</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
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