Q2A vs OSQA.net vs Askbot.org

Question

of these three

OSQA , Askbot, q2a which one is most stable and advanced in feature wise

Answer 1

I have used all three and  IMO Q2A is the most stable, mature, broadest developer community and a great mix of diverse features..  

But they all three have unique aspects..  

Practically speaking if you like PHP, Q2A is the way to go.. if you like python you will go with the other two potentially.

BTW.. I seem to remember that Askbot is a fork of OSQA, which is a fork of an ealier codebase from China or somewhere. ( CNPROG?)

 

 

Comments

Yes, indeed. OSQA is a new version of CNProg (CNProg is not supported now).

Answer 2

Agree with Case42... AskBot is pretty neat, but it's written in Python, which means it runs as an app and you have to restart the webserver every time you change something (if you don't do tweaking, that's not a problem, I guess).  And it has dependencies, packages, etc.  The install procedure is really messy.

Also being Python-based means it doesn't integrate as easily with Wordpress, which is also written in PHP.  I was just more familiar with PHP and use Wordpress on my site, so Q2A is pretty natural for me.

Another thing is, Askbot didn't support plugins, if I remember correctly.  I was hacking away at the core for a while, and Evgeny (the leader) was great about incorporating our changes, but in the end, it just seemed like more work than it was worth.  Theming is also more complicated, I think.  Q2A plugin and theme systems rock :)

A plus for Askbot, I guess, is it runs on Django, which is a pretty big project with some neat features if you are a developer.

Edit: Looking at the stats can tell you something:

Askbot:

602 questions, 431 users

Q2A:

2,316 questions, 2,171 users.

PHP => Ease of use => Widespread adoption => community involvement => quicker bug fixes and feature additions => Ease of use... and so on.

Answer 3

I haven't used Askbot or OSQA (they are pretty much identical) but from what I can tell of features and so on, Q2A is better.

I think now the only real differences are (1) Q2A doesn't support OpenID (and there aren't any plugins for it), and (2) Askbot/OSQA have badges natively, whereas Q2A you need a plugin.

Also, the default theme of Askbot is ugly and cramped. Q2A is on the drab side but it's fairly clear and usable once you've tweaked a few options.

Being PHP is a huge advantage for Q2A in my opinion - PHP hosting is dime-a-dozen and it's much easier to install, run and modify for the majority of people. Plus Q2A's plugins feature is awesome :)

Oh, and Q2A is by a massive margin the best Q&A app for PHP.

Comments

One thing that I liked about askbot is that the markdown-editor comes with image upload ( from local computer) capability. I don't know why!

Answer 4

Being an active developer of Question2Answer (Q2A) now and having been used OSQA in the past in a project, i would definitely recommend Q2A over OSQA and AskBot. When you evaluate an opensource project, you need to check the community support - Q2A wins hands shown. Certain OSQA scripts are not coded optimally and lead to memory leak - I am talking about using a default installation.

Also, as others have mentioned, being PHP written, Q2A easily gels with many other os products like wordpress. AskBot is not free any more i think as askbot.org redirects to the paid version askbot.com.

Answer 5

all experts already mentioned.... my point may be little out from the point...

Flexibility in design and development is most important part for any script. That is the reson why WordPress took over all other CMS like Joomla etc.

The same way Q2A has great flexibility to fulfill cusom needs and have nice hook and events, easy to use, great templating system, plugn API in short Q2A covered most area for customization. I also believe it still required some more flexibility but I am sure after couple of versions we will have it one day..

Other strong part of Q2A is PHP and MYSQL (love it) that makes very flexible, easy to use with less headach. Also any developer requred help and support ( at lest till they get hands on the script ) for that script even he/she is an expert. I found Q2A community is very helpful and ready to share knowledge. Where I have checked Askbot.org support forum there is no more than 2 answers I found on any question. This is very painful when you are trying to hands on the script and huge possibility to stuck somewhere and eventually you may end up with it.

Answer 6

Here are the advantages for each in my view:

1. Q2A: biggest community for plugins, by far easiest to implement, diverse themes (hopefully more pretty themes coming in the future?)
2. Askbot: Most uniform design, two full time employees working on it, provides cheap(ish) hosting solution
3. OSQA: I don't see why most people would choose this, difficult to implement compared to others

Also, these guys game some bullet points for each, including Shapado:
https://wiki.edubuntu.org/QandALocalization