Scoold: Self-hosted Q&A Solution and Stack overflow Alternative
There is no doubt that Stack Overflow is the most popular resource for developers to get answers. However, some people may be looking for a self-hosted, open-source alternative for communities and developer teams. That's where Scoold comes in – let us introduce you to it.
What is Scoold?
Scoold is a Q&A and knowledge sharing platform designed specifically for teams. The project was initially created in 2008 and then released in 2012 as a social network for schools inspired by Stack Overflow. In 2017, it underwent a major refactoring, repackaging and was made open-source.
Scoold is extremely flexible and can run on various platforms, including Heroku, DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure, or any VPS hosting provider. It's lightweight, with approximately 7000 lines of code, and the backend is managed by a separate service called Para. What's more, Scoold doesn't require a database, and the controller logic is kept simple because all the heavy lifting is delegated to Para. This makes it easy to read and learn, even for junior developers.
In short, Scoold is an ideal choice for teams looking for a powerful Q&A and knowledge-sharing platform that is both flexible and easy to use.
Editions
Scoold has two editions: the free community edition, which anyone can download, install, and use at no charge, and Scoold Pro, the paid version of Scoold with premium features that make it the perfect knowledge-sharing platform for your company or team.
Features
- Full-featured Q&A platform
- Database-agnostic, optimized for cloud deployment
- Full-text search
- Distributed object cache
- Location-based search and "near me" filtering of posts
- I18n with RTL language support
- Reputation and voting system with badges
- Custom badges - add your own text, icon, and color
- Spaces (Teams) - groups of isolated questions and users
- Webhooks with signature signing
- Zapier integration
- Minimal frontend JS code based on jQuery
- Modern, responsive layout powered by Materialize CSS
- Suggestions for similar questions and hints for duplicate posts
- Email notifications for post replies and comments
- Backup and Restore
- RESTful API defined with OpenAPI 3.0
- Spring Boot project (single JAR)
- Mutual authentication support (mTLS)
- LDAP authentication support
- Social login (Facebook, Google, GitHub, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Slack, Amazon, Twitter) with Gravatar support
- Syntax highlighting for code in posts, GFM markdown support with tables, task lists and strikethrough
- Import data from Stack Overflow for Teams
- Emojis! - using this cheat sheet or inline Unicode
- Support for uploading custom avatars (to Imgur, Cloudinary)
- SEO friendly
- Cookie consent (for GDPR, CCPA, etc.)
Platforms
Scoold can be installed on any server with Java support.
License
Scoold is released under the Apache-2.0 License.
