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Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

What's the difference to other systems like this? For example OS QA [1] seems to be quite popular/established?

Experiences, anyone?

OSQA is based on Django, which makes it somewhat harder to deploy. I know because we package it as a BitNami stack http://bitnami.org/stack/osqa and also use it for our Q/A site http://answers.bitnami.org Without actually having tested Coordino yet, I believe the fact that it is based on PHP should make it easier to adopt and extend. It will be interesting to see if it gets traction, there are plenty of StackOverflow clones that have been abandoned over time. An important factor in choosing OSQA was the fact that even though it was open source, it was backed by a company. A Q/A site, like forum software, is not something that you can move away from easily once you have content in it.

Having just installed Coordino in under 5 minutes (from git clone to login) on my Mac workstation at the office, I can attest to the ease of deployment.

We've been looking for an in-office knowledge base solution but we're a bit lazy (more accurately swamped with client work) so this was a no-brainer to try when I saw it was PHP.

I find it's installation method, like most PHP programs, to be somewhat off-putting. Yeah, it's great for a development box--place in front of a web server and hit the browser to finish up--but it's a nightmare for automated deployments: source code and configuration are two different assets that _should_ exist in two different places on the filesystem. When they do it's reliable to update one or the other without issue, else it's a bit chancy for my tastes.

Yes I can attest to the ease of OSQA/Bitnami. It's what I used to create http://chicagofounders.com. Thanks for including OSQA on Bitnami, as it was a relatively simple deployment!

A Q/A site, like forum software, is not something that you can move away from easily once you have content in it

Why not? If it has a decent API it should be easy.

The problem is that you need to move the content, user accounts, ratings, etc. from one system to another. The existing system has to had an API to export that information in a format that the new system can understand. If you have that, then it is easy, the problem is most systems out there do not have that :) Situation is a bit better with extremely popular projects for blogs or forums, like Wordpress or phpBB, which have an ecosystem of exporter/importer tools.

in a format that the new system can understand

Or you can write your own converter - it probably takes ~30m to whip up something in Python.

Something - yes. Something which implements everything required and is tested - not likely.

There's a huge difference between converting data from your little hobby and converting the vital knowledge of your company. It's different because it's more mission critical - you don't want to screw it up.

It's also different because the bigger dataset is likely to have some customizations and other "small" stuff which tends to matter in big perspective. You might be okay for losing e.g. votes if it's a small data set, but you really want it in with a big one.

Sorry, that's nonsense. Each one of the systems is going to have a different schema and constraints for users, posts, comments, votes, that most likely will not have a one-to-one mapping.

depends on the system - 30 minutes is not enough to convert users, groups, permissions, threaded conversations, voting, keywords, etc, especially if both systems do not use the same data model.

About a month ago I installed OSQA and 'shapado' -- http://shapado.com/ QSQA appeared much more rounded compared with shapado, and behaved much more like StackOverflow. Only problem I have had with QSQA is that changing the theme / template could be easier.

Oh, and by default the admin page of QSQA had a strange almost intelligible layout. However this is a mode that can be turned off... Once you find the option.

QSQA also has a neat 'community bootstrap' mode that lowers the required reputation for many actions, linking URL's down votes, etc.

All in all very happy with QSQA.

Askbot http://askbot.org is a very easy to install app - installation uses standard Python methods and there is even a configuration script that will help you deploy it (and all dependencies are satisfied automatically too).

In comparison, Askbot is faster than both Shapado and OSQA and can be with ease deployed along with other Django applications.

Of all open source Q&A forums as far as I know, Askbot is the only one to have any significant number of unit tests.

Like OSQA, Askbot is backed by a company, now based in Chile and this year it is supported by StartUp Chile business incubator!

I would also like to know how it compares to Shapado: http://shapado.com

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