Web-based

Scoold: Self-hosted Q&A Solution and Stack overflow Alternative

Photo by Ray Hennessy / Unsplash

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.)