Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter?

October 15, 2007 12:53 PM

Is there an open course codebase similar to ... Ask Metafilter? I have a fun idea for a specialized group Q and A blog, but I'm not much of a coder.
posted by clango to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Ask Metafilter is basically a forum, isn't it? There are plenty of open source apps for that available.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 1:04 PM on October 15, 2007

Sort of a previously. And yes, a forum does the job pretty well most of the time. (use punBB, not phpBB if you use one)
posted by tmcw at 1:06 PM on October 15, 2007

seems like you could also do it pretty easily with wordpress. Plus, it seems like forum packages are generally difficult to reskin.
posted by Good Brain at 1:15 PM on October 15, 2007

Response by poster: Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. I never really thought of Ask Mefi as a forum, but it is. Thanks!
posted by clango at 1:29 PM on October 15, 2007

Just don't use Phpilfer.. it's got some good ideas but the codebase is a pain.

Hey mathowie... any time you want to ditch coldfusion for something better (python/cherrypy ...or php I guess) then let me know
posted by holloway at 2:56 PM on October 15, 2007

Interesting idea to use PunBB as the base for it. Between the templates and the easily-readable PHP code, it's pretty darn customizable. I've got no doubt that with some clever tweaking and a few plugins, you could end up with a believable Ask Metafilter twin. That actually sounds like a pretty fun project.

Wordpress (or one of its ilk) would work too. I'm sure there's a way to allow people the means to sign up for an account from a form on the non-admin portion of a Wordpress blog, and open registration would really be the only major thing that you'd need that's atypical for a blog. Well, that and a way to favorite answers/comments. But there's surely a plugin floating around for that.
posted by kryptondog at 3:23 PM on October 15, 2007

Movable Type (n.b. I work with the team that makes it) can do exactly this, and we've tried to make a lot of the newer community features as MeFi-like as possible. (Take a look at things like the "Talk" section of Serious Eats for an example.) I'm building a site that'll work a lot like a topic-specific AskMe and I'm doing it on MT. Plus, there's a free version of MT if you want to play with it. Plugins like Entry Post can help even more.
posted by anildash at 5:22 PM on October 15, 2007