Asking for help on a forum is a great way to learn and grow as a developer. But it is important that you know how to ask good questions so people can effectively help you.
In this article, I will walk you through how to ask good questions on a forum so you can receive helpful answers.
Make sure to research the problem first
freeCodeCamp has come up with the Read - Search - Ask method. Before you make a post on the forum, make sure to read through the error messages you are receiving.
Then you can search through documentation or Google to see if there is a solution you can use to help you. If you have questions about specific methods or properties make sure to look at documentation first.
Please avoid making posts like this:
This question is vague and can be easily searched for on Google.
If you have specific questions on how a method works, then you need to make sure to detail that in your post.
Ask specific questions and provide details of the problem
When you need help with a problem, please provide as much detail as possible so people know how to help you.
You want to avoid making posts like this:
This post does not provide any explanation of what the user is struggling with which makes it hard for people to offer assistance.
If you are struggling with a problem, make sure to include the following:
- a descriptive title related to the problem you are facing
- a brief description of the problem you are facing
- a list of error messages you are seeing
- a link to the challenge or project you are working on
- your code of what you have tried so far
Example of specific forum question
Now let's look at an example of how to ask a more specific question. The title of the below post is "Having trouble creating a responsive image for the tribute page project".
That descriptive title lets people know what I am struggling with. In the body of my post, I am going to describe the problem and provide all of the necessary information.
In this post, I have included the full project code, a description of the problem, a code snippet of what I tried and the error messages I am receiving.
I also let people know I tried researching for the problem first.
With this type of information, someone can go into my project code and realize that I mistakenly wrote .img-div instead of #img-div.
Remember to format your code
When providing code snippets in your post, please remember to format your code so people can read it.
Please read through this post on how to format your code in a forum.
If you need help formatting your code, then please reach out to a moderator for that forum and they will assist you.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that people want to help you. But if you don't provide enough information, then it makes it difficult to assist you.
I hope you found this article helpful, and happy coding.