Skip to content

Forums replacements

vascowhite edited this page Nov 12, 2015 · 28 revisions

We're looking for a new forums tech. Input welcome.

Requirements:

  • ability to post news (eg releases)
  • focus on answering questions so we have little duplicate questions
  • great search
  • responsive design

Why?

We want to replace the forum because of

  • bad search-engine
  • much duplicated questions
  • no possibility to mark duplicate questions
  • no possibility to mark off-topic questions (like basic questions how to configure apache or similar)

Contestants

Discourse

URL: http://discourse.org<br > Demo/Example: http://community.nethserver.org/

Pro:

  • ability to post news (eg releases)
  • great, real time search
  • responsive design
  • tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
  • Full Forum Software (with Topics,...)
  • Supports GitHub Login!
  • Shows You Similar Topics before You post a new one

Contra:

  • not focused on asking/answering questions
  • not good at reducing duplicate questions

StackExchange

URL: http://stackexchange.com<br > Demo/Example of integrated version: http://askubuntu.com/

Pro:

  • Question Portal
  • tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
  • nice points system and all that for participants answering questions

Contra:

  • Not self-hosted (by ownCloud - on the servers of StackExchange)
  • Not responsive
  • Questions about setting up or using owncloud would be off topic at stackoverflow.

Askbot

URL: https://askbot.com/<br > Demo/Example: https://ask.fedoraproject.org/

Pro:

  • Focus on asking questions and getting answers
  • helps prevent duplicate questions
  • Self-hosting possible
  • tagging to mark questions as duplicate/off-topic/answered
  • nice points system and all that for participants answering questions
  • notifications system
  • SSO and login methods from social media (openID, google, twitter etc)
  • responsive design
  • choice between self hosting and letting askbot host (seems not expensive)

Contra:

  • not so nice for conversations
  • not so good with announcements (would have to be tag, we might have to hack the software to show a certain tag on top)
  • no sub boards (but tags)

apps.owncloud.com

apps.owncloud.com includes an question portal.

Pro:

  • focus on answering questions so we have little duplicate questions

Contra:

  • won't solve the issue that same questions are asked over and over again
  • no ability to post news (eg releases)
  • not so great search
  • no responsive design