Today, it is getting much more common to support a Q&A platform on your site rather than a forum.

Q&A systems are much more “to-the-point”, targeted to find the best answer and easier to use for both parties (users asking questions and the ones answering them).

Answerbase is a quality hosted platform for adding such Q&A interaction that can be integrated into any website with ease (there is single sign-on-auth support and a full-featured API).

The application provides customization on each functionality like defining “who can ask questions or send replies (anyone or only users)”, there is a points system which makes experts more significant.

It has a powerful admin panel that enables the system admin to control all the details + content, works on mobile and integrates nicely into social platforms.

Also, it has widgets for listing and/or starting the conversation from any web page. The widgets list include:

• Q&A tab (for placing a button that displays the “ask  a question” form)
• Ask a question (for embedding the form into anywhere we prefer)
• Full feature Q&A (a widget to ask questions and view popular questions/answers)
• Question list (display topic-specific questions)
• Expert list (present topic-specific experts)

Answerbase is very good at handling such uses:

Online communities

Q&A websites can be the community itself or just a part of it. They attract new users so easily as users are eager to register for getting answers and the content generated regularly attracts new visitors (from search engines).

Private collaboration

Companies can use it for creating and sharing private-only content and knowledge-base by providing access to only registered/approved users.

Social commerce & customer support

Like mentioned, such a Q&A website can easily be the pre-sales or support community of a product/service. And, if supported actively by the customer support staff, it’ll be a good place to turn questions into sales.

And, within time, it’ll become a “pool of answers” where potential customers won’t even need to contact the staff.

The giveaway

Answerbase is giving away 3 annual Business Plan subscriptions. In order to win one of the annual licenses:

• sign-up for a free trial of the Answerbase service
• submit your Answerbase site name to the comments

Winners will be picked randomly with the query below 1 week later (29 Jan 2013):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3620 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck everyone.

The winners

Here they are:

• @Magnum Themes
• @Derek
• @der_robert

Congratulations.

Today, many companies or teams are in need of exchanging information privately. This can be a common knowledgebase about a product, a discussion environment for employees, etc.

Answerbase, a powerful hosted application for creating question&answer websites, has a special focus on creating such private Q&A communities that eases how users exchange information.

Any Answerbase-powered website can require its users to be registered, approved, and logged in to ensure that only qualified user’s access the created information.

This website can be for a small team discussing the details of a project being developed or a huge company's internal knowledgebase where only allowed users can contribute and reach. The application can simply cover all when it comes to supporting your internal collaboration needs through Q&A.

The private community can also support “exclusive (or paid)” content, where users need to make a payment to have access to the Q&A website. This is handy for anyone willing to create an elite collaboration environment while keeping contributors motivated.

There are many other features that encourages users interact with each other like "users having custom profiles", gaining points and levels according to the answered questions, social media integration and more.

All the functionality of Answerbase can be controlled with a powerful admin panel, the look/ feel can be customized and widgets + API exist for more involved integrations.

And, the platform is hosted, everything starts to work instantly with no technical headaches.

To sum up, Answerbase's private collaboration software is a very good fit for anyone looking to exchange (private) information with an easy-to-manage interface.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to get a chance to win one of the 3 annual Professional plans being given away, just register a free trial to Answerbase and mention your sitename in the comments of this post.

Winners will be picked randomly with the query below 1 week later (05 September 2012).

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3145 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• der_robert (comment #701639)
• wyr (comment #702162)
• kane (comment #701578)

Congratulations.

The giveaway of 3 "Annual Business Level Accounts" for Answerbase, a complete application for building Q&A websites, has ended today and winners are selected.

As a short reminder:

What is Answerbase?

Answerbase is a hosted service for building a Question & Answer website quickly without any programming.

It covers all the features required to create such a website, can be customized to match any design and has an API for a tight integration with 3rd party apps.

The application has tools like widgets to help the content to spread and can be used from mobile devices with an auto-created version for those browsers.

There are also many other features like SEO-friendly URLs, an admin panel to control every detail, data import/export and more.

And, the winners

Here are the winners of this giveaway:

• Peiman (comment #362521)
• stay (comment #362576)
• Alex (comment #362446)

Congratulations and have a great day!

In a web where the huge portion of the content is created by communities and users, Question & Answer websites became very popular.

They are perfect platforms for helping users find answers with the help of other users or expert staff, minimizing support requests and collecting experience. Also, building Q&A websites on niche subjects to create a community can itself be a good idea.

Answerbase, a hosted service for creating full-featured Q&A websites easily, is giving away "3 Annual Business Level Accounts" to WRD readers and details about the giveaway are mentioned at the bottom of this article.

What is Answerbase?

Answerbase is a service (which is already used by popular brands) where anyone can build a complete Question & Answer website very quickly without any programming or installation.

Users can easily register (there is support for Facebook, Twitter and oAuth sign-in) to post questions and replies. Replies can include text, image and video to provide the best information.

Other users can vote the replies to help determining the best answers. Also, the answers by the staff are automatically highlighted so they can be distinguished from others.

The front-end is white-labeled and design of the website can be completely customized. There are 3 ready-to-use templates offered and it is possible to change every image, color or text. For maximum customization, you can add your own CSS styles as well.

Depending on the selected plan, there is a powerful API provided to pull the content and/or better integrate the functionality with your own system.

Q&A websites are a good way of getting organic and related traffic to websites considering there is a continuous content generation. Answerbase does its best on getting the right traffic with SEO-friendly URLs, dynamic page titles, sitemap and more.

Also, using "widget builders", users can setup widgets and insert relevant content + functionality to their own sites which will end up in a more activity on the main website.

The reports module of the application displays all the metrics you need to find out how the system is performing like the growth of userbase, questions, answers and the overall activity. And, there is support for Google Analytics integration.

A great feature is the website automatically having a mobile-friendly version which can be viewed correctly from iOS, Android and many other mobile devices.

And, the system accepts "data import" which is nice if you are switching from another system (data can be exported too).

How to win the licenses?

In order to win one of the annual licenses:

• sign-up for a free trial of the Answerbase service
• submit your Answerbase site name to the comments

Winners will be picked randomly with the query below 1 week later (04 July 2011):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2321 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck everyone.