And then basically when the user posts a new Topic and says, “I have a problem, help me”, with no basic information. Someone will add a post describing how to get help, like:
I did some research in the Discourse forum before posting this Topic. Jeff Atwood called this, “default first post template”. Basically, it sounds like a template can be used in the Support Category to prompt the user for the basic tech support information when they create the Topic. The template can be restricted to a specific Category.
If you look at the top of the discourse post, they specifically mention a “Technical Support Forum” Use Case.
I don’t quite have a handle on discourse way of documenting. There doesn’t appear to be any official formal documentation, just discourse-style.
The Topic Templates are built-in already and created by the admin by going to Edit…. This meta.discourse image shows Edit > Topic Template.
This link appears to indicate it is a pain to change the template when there are many subcategories because it is a manual process.
This link indicates the Topic Template might not be user-friendly on a mobile device.
The Discourse Templates are “canned reply templates”. They provide a way to have a consistent message to a post. I could see those being used as a reply to the original post when indicating further information is required. I’m not sure if it can be used as a Topic Template.
There were some discourse posts that talked about forms and here, and the use of the Placehold Forms.
I ran into brave which uses templates in their support forum.