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Which is the best architectural forum?

Which forum software or platform is best for the modern social internet - which has principles of Quora, stackoverflow, and reddit built in?

  • I am building a community on a very regional and topical niche - so nowhere close to competing directly with Quora. Standard options are to use regular bulletin boards like vBulletin/phpBB. My fear is that these softwares have run their course. The modern social internet has exceptional sites like Quora, Reddit and Stackoverflow. I want to build something similar where users can seamlessly ask questions and get the best answers (without investing in building the software itself: our expertise is content). What forum software or platform can do this job? Is anyone is building something on the lines? Any other advice?

  • Answer:

    Have you looked into Discourse? It was released earlier in 2013 by ,  Stackoverflow Co-Founder and Robin Ward of Forumwarz, and an impressive team. Link: http://www.discourse.org/ I've not used it yet (keen as I am) but there's reason to suggest it speaks to some of your needs: "Discourse is a from-scratch reboot, an attempt to reimagine what a modern, sustainable, fully open-source Internet discussion platform should be today – both from a technology standpoint and a sociology standpoint." Be sure to invest in a good Community Manager from the outset, communities don't build themselves! Good luck.

Alison Michalk at Quora Visit the source

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http://vanillaforums.com is the original attempt to refresh the idea of Internet Forums (disclaimer I work for them). Its not just me writing this, though. If you look at reviews or spend sometime using  Vanilla Forums, you quickly see how we differ from a lot of the legacy forum software. Most importantly Vanilla allows owners to focus on their community rather than a myriad of complex backend options they'll never use. There are also still plenty of addons to make it work your way (if you choose). You can also, for example, turn your community into a question and answer site. Vanilla Forums offers a hosted service for those that don't want to have worry about hosting, but there is also an open source version which runs on PHP/MSQL. Even before I worked for Vanilla ( and one of the reasons I went there) is that I believe they truly are leaders in re-inventing the way forums are done. ### Quick Update  October 2014. Created this video to show how you can create a Q&A community with Vanilla Forums (Which was specific to your question.)

Adrian Speyer

A better question is why doesn't Quora release of forum software of their own?  Or at the very least private group forums similar to Facebook (but with Quora's far far superior discussion interface). Honestly, I've been searching for private forum software that basically works just like Quora and it doesn't seem to exist. It would be so unbelievably valuable to academic communities who don't want to open their entire discourse to the public.

Patrick Meath

Just to throw my hat into the ring, I created a simple community forum tool that resembles Quora/Reddit and can sit anywhere on your site. It supports any type of media and I'd love to get your thoughts, even if you choose something else :)http://jowl.io/ That's our site, and you can see the forum in action here. http://petsimpl.com/#contactThanks, Quinn

Quinn Cully

I would suggest CODOFORUM: a FREE PHP based modern forum script. Link: http://codoforum.com Beautiful UI/UX: Modern and unconventional but a super enjoyable user experience. Responsive: No more separate apps or websites for mobile devices Rich content: WYSIWYG(Markdown & BBCode), embed images within post & more. Single sign on: supports Fb, Google and tightly integrates with exisiting website(syncs names and avatars too) Built for developers: The code is built from scratch, clean, well tested, documented and extensible. CF is built using the latest coding patterns and is fully compliant with the new PSR-0 standards.

Avinash D'silva

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