Question & answer websites (like Stack Overflow) are great platforms for enabling communities to share knowledge and help each other.

Although they are kinda similar-in-function with the forum applications (check 9 Widely-Used And Free Forum Softwares), the main focus is finding the (best) answers.

Here are 5 free and open source or hosted platforms to create your own question-answer website:

Question2Answer

Question Vote

Question2Answer is an application that is built with PHP-MySQL that has a points-based reputation system.

Users can comment into any questions and they can be tagged.

It can be totally styled with CSS and has an admin interface to manage the whole application.

QSQA

QSQA

QSQA enables anyone to instantly create a full-featured question-answer community where users can earn point/badges for their contribution.

It is written in Python and powered by the Django application framework.

 

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Answerbase

Answerbase

Answerbase is a powerful and hosted service for creating Q&A websites without any installation.

The front-end can be customized completely with the help of ready-to-use templates, ability to update every image/text and inserting custom CSS styles.

A feature-rich admin panel eases the management of the system, users and content.

Once the website is created, it gets a mobile-friendly version automatically and there is an API provided for integration with 3rd party products.

 

Shapado

Shapado

This question-answer application is written in Ruby, MongoMapper and MongoDB.

It is multilingual and, optionally, users can create their own websites in a free hosted platform rather than installing it.

Qwench

Qwench

Qwench is a simple-yet-functional application.

It comes with a points/rewards system, an entry can be posted as a knowledge-base article (for corporate sites) and it can be customized via CSS.

Qhub

Qhub

Qhub is a free hosted platform for creating a q&a website where the look-feel can be customized and members can be managed easily.

You can optionally use a URL under Qhub or your own domain name.

And Others:

  • Stacked: it is an ASP.NET alternative but not improved for a while.
  • CNPROG: a pretty powerful one which is Django-powered (QSQA is a for of this application)
  • AskBot: a fork of CNPROG.
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