It’s tempting to dive right into the solution with an article like this, but describing the problem is a really important part of writing effective content. Readers need to be able to tell if your article speaks to the problems they’re dealing with. Think about how your audience is experiencing this problem and explain the problem using terminology and examples that are relevant to those experiences.

Once you’ve described the problem, it’s time to explain how to fix it. Using a numbered list, write out a step-by-step solution. Use terms that readers will know and understand, and work through one step at a time. Where possible, illustrate steps with pictures. That way, people reading your article know what things should look like at each step along the way. If there’s more than one possible solution, your best bet is to stick to the most common solution in your write-up. If you really think you need to give people more options, you can use an expand to create a collapsible panel where other solutions can go.

Sometimes, you come across an article about a problem that’s similar to yours, but not quite the same. And sometimes, knowing more about how something works can help you prevent problems later on. By applying labels to your troubleshooting articles and using the content by label macro (already included in this template), you can automatically display related articles and pages. Just make sure you use the same label for all related pages.