jAnswers Factory is a Questions and Answers Extension for Joomla 1.5 that allows communities to create huge databases of Knowledge to specific themes. The most known Q&A community is the Yahoo Answers service where millions of users are interacting on a very wide area of expertise. Also a success story is in the Expert-Exchange website that implements some interesting reward systems for top answers.

Your main user functionality are reflected in the automatically installed user Menu (Standard Joomla Menu that can be handled as any other menus). There are two versions of it.
For Guest users (not logged in the site) they can see this Main Menu:

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Guest User Menu

    Depending on the settings of the extension you can allow Guest users to post Questions and Answer Questions. In this tutorial we will assume only registered users may post Questions and Answers.
    User registration is handled by Joomla. There is no Core hack needed or special registration module.
    
    After creating an account / logging into an existing one more options will show on the JAnswers menu.

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Registered User Menu

    Now that you have created an account Users may want to set up their JAnswers Profile - where some extended information is provided for the community. The Extension is also Community Builder integrable, or you can use the default user profile from Janswers.
Let's set up your profile - go to My Profile. In the profile section you can see your user statistics and your questions if you have any.
     
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You can also upload an Avatar for your Profile.

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On Your profile section you can also see your latest open questions

    To Change your Profile - click Edit details

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    Basic user information fields can be filled here: Name, Address, Email, a contact option and notification option.
    You can also upload an avatar, a picture that will show on your questions and answers. To do this click on Upload avatar in the "My Profile" screen.

    To ask a question go to Ask Question in the JAnswers Menu.
    
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    Write your Question on the first line and if you wish some details can be added about your question. Select the right category for your question and write a few tags separated by colon.
    Press Ask to publish your question.
  
To view all your questions go to "My Questions" in the JAnswers Menu:
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You can see here in a glance what questions have already answers and when your question will expire.

    Clicking on the Tags or Category of the question will perform a search for question based on the Tags criteria.
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        clicking on fastfood will generate these:
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    To see the Asker Profile, just click on his name and you will get to the personal panel of the user where you can see his user Details and all the questions and answers he has posted.
    
    The proper way for searching is to go to "Search for Knowledge" on the JAnswers Menu.

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    Enter a Keyword and press search. For a narrowed search you can also choose a category, or who has asked the question or choose the status: Open for Answers, Undecided or Decided Question. Checking the "Search in details" box will extend the search to the Question details. Click Search to get the result list.

    If you publish in Administrator Backend the "Featured" Payment Items, Users may upgrade their Questions to "Featured Gold" and "Featured Silver" status. This way they increase the  chance to have their question answered. You also have the option to feature a question, gold or silver, so it shows first on searches and in the Featured column on the front page. Go to your question and click on the proper Upgrade Button. Follow the payment steps to get your question featured.

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Click on the Upgrade Button of your choice.

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Confirm your selection


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Choose Your favorite Payment Method

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Confirm the Payment. This step will redirect you to the Gateway in order to finalize the payment
   

Answering a Question


    To answer questions click on "Answer Questions" in the JAnswers menu. This will open a list with all the questions still open for answers. Pick your Question that matches your expertise.
    
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    Clicking on the Question will open it and you can read the Question Details and see the posted answers. Also you can report the spam Questions or abusive questions to the Site administrator. Websites rely on User feedback to keep the community clean of such nuisance.
    
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    On the lower side of the question you can see how many views it has, when it will expires and how many have marked it as Interesting! You can also click on it's tags or category to view similar questions. To report it press on the Megaphone icon on the right.

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    You have the option to select between 2 premade complaints or  write one of your own. 
The Administrator will read your complaint and take action as soon as possible.

     To answer the Question click on Answer Question Button - this will open the next screen where you can write your answer and (optionally) write your reference links or quotations.
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    Clicking on Preview will show you the answer before it gets posted, you can still edit it or press Save Answer to publish it.
    
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Adding Questions to Favorite

    When browsing questions you can click on the star icon to add them to your favorites. To see all your favorite Q/A go to "Favorite Answers" in the JAnswers menu and you can navigate through the Favorite List.  In order to remove them from your favorites click on the star icon again. Your favorite questions appear with a yellow star, any other question will have a blue star. You can not add your own Questions to Favorites. The number in the tooltip of the star icon refers to how many people have added them to their watchlist - this is an ingenious way to identify interesting questions. By adding Questions to your Fav List you will be announced via mail about any changes regarding them (Expiration, Answers, Best Answer Chosen).

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Favorite Questions have a Yellow Star


    The "Discover Answers" function on the JAnswers menu will open a list with all the closed questions that received a valid answer. This way Community Knowledge is available for future reference. Only Questions that have answers will appear in this list.
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Choosing Best Answer

    When your Question gets the first answers, you can manually choose the most useful answer. If no answer is chosen within 24 hours after Question expiration, then the most voted answer will be chosen. Any registered user may vote only once for an answer. They may vote positive or negative (Thumbs up or thumbs down). To manually select a best answer for your question go to the respective answer and click on the "Choose this answer as best answer" button. When a best answer has been chosen the question closes.

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Click on the Button to select this answer


    Along with questions, answers can be reported as well by clicking the Megaphone icon underneath them.

    You also have the option to rate answers as good or bad by clicking on the up/down thumbs. If a question expires with no best answer chosen then the answer with the most thumbs up will be chosen. Users can vote on undecided questions in the "Vote Answers" section which can be accessed from the JAnswers menu.
    
Category Browsing

    To browse categories go to "Categories" in the JAnswers menu, clicking on a category will show all the questions posted under that category.

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Janswers Modules

    JAnswers also features some modules that administrators may choose to publish in specific positions.

    Open Questions displays a number of questions still open.

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    Random Questions displays a number of random questions from all categories, open or expired.

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    Latest Questions displays the last questions posted on the site.

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    Popular Questions the top questions with the most views.
    
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    Featured Questions displays a number of featured questions.
    
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    Tag Cloud displays tag words from the active/answered questions.

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This Tutorial is compliant with jAnswers Factory 1.0.6.