[opensourcedex]

scoold is a free, open source community platforms project written in Java and released under Apache-2.0. It has 923 GitHub stars, 227 forks and 7 open issues, and was last pushed 2 days ago. On this registry it ranks #10 of 14 tracked projects in Community Platforms, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is scoold?

Scoold is an Apache-2.0 licensed, self-hostable Q&A and knowledge-sharing platform for teams and organizations that want a Stack Overflow-style space for internal questions and answers.

What it is

Scoold is a Java, Spring Boot question-and-answer platform, shipped as a single JAR, that gives a team its own place to ask questions, post answers and accumulate searchable knowledge. All persistence and heavy lifting are delegated to a separate backend service called Para, which keeps Scoold lightweight and database-agnostic and allows data to be stored in any of the popular databases. The project began in 2008, was released in 2012 as a social network for schools inspired by Stack Overflow, and was refactored, repackaged and open-sourced in 2017. It can be deployed on Heroku, DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure or any VPS hosting provider.

The problem it solves is that team knowledge, decisions and troubleshooting answers get stranded in chat scrollback and one-off messages, with no searchable structure. Scoold provides that structure: full-text search, suggestions for similar questions and hints about duplicate posts, so an answer is written once and found later. It also gives organizations an exit from a closed platform, because it can import data from Stack Overflow for Teams.

Key capabilities

  • Full-featured Q&A with a reputation and voting system, badges, and custom badges where the text, icon and colour are supplied by the administrator.
  • Spaces (Teams) group isolated questions and users, separating the Q&A of different teams or projects within one deployment.
  • Full-text search, a distributed object cache, and location-based search with "near me" filtering of posts.
  • Authentication through LDAP, mutual authentication (mTLS), and social login with Facebook, Google, GitHub, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Slack, Amazon and Twitter, with Gravatar support.
  • Content formatting with GFM markdown including tables, task lists and strikethrough, syntax highlighting for code in posts, and emoji via a cheat sheet or inline Unicode.
  • Automation through a RESTful API defined with OpenAPI 3.0, webhooks with signature signing, and a Zapier integration.
  • Operations features including backup and restore, email notifications for post replies and comments, I18n with RTL language support, and cookie consent for GDPR and CCPA.

Who uses it and how

  • Teams that want an internal knowledge base they host themselves rather than pay for per seat, including groups moving off Stack Overflow for Teams using its import.
  • Organizations with existing directory infrastructure, since LDAP authentication and social login connect Scoold to identity sources already in place.
  • Multi-team organizations that use Spaces to keep questions and users isolated per team, from a single deployment.
  • Developers and smaller teams that need to read and modify the codebase, which the project describes as easy to read and learnable quickly, even by junior developers.
  • Self-hosters running on Heroku, DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure or any VPS provider.

Getting started

Pull the published erudikaltd/scoold image from Docker Hub, or build the Spring Boot project and run the single JAR, alongside a Para backend instance that Scoold uses for storage. Scoold Pro, the paid version with premium features, is available separately through paraio.com.

How it compares

The named points of comparison are Stack Overflow, which inspired Scoold, and Stack Overflow for Teams, from which Scoold can import data. Scoold Pro is presented against per-seat subscription models with flat pricing without limits and a perpetual licence, while the core project remains Apache-2.0 and self-hosted.

When to use it — and when not to

Scoold is only part of a stack: a self-hoster must also run Para and configure a supported database, so the operational surface is larger than a single container. Teams that need SAML, SCIM 2.0 provisioning, Slack, Mattermost or Microsoft Teams integrations, file uploads, anonymous posts, unlimited spaces or multiple admins will not find those in the Apache-2.0 core, since they are Scoold Pro features. Teams wanting zero-maintenance hosting with no backend service to operate should choose a hosted option instead.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Scoold Logo



The most effective way to share knowledge within your team or organization

Scoold is a Q&A and a knowledge sharing platform for teams, inspired by Stack Overflow.
Scoold is enterprise-ready, super customizable and lightweight.

Scoold Pro, the premium version of Scoold, is the perfect knowledge sharing platform for your company or team. The pricing is flat, without limits, the license - perpetual.

Are you still paying per seat in 2026? Scoold Pro is the knowledge sharing platform to migrate to!

Docker pulls Docker pulls Join the chat at https://gitter.im/Erudika/scoold License

Website  -  Documentation  -  Demo  -  Compare Features  -  API

Scoold Screenshot

Scoold - open-source knowledge sharing platform

Scoold is a Q&A and a knowledge sharing platform for teams. The project was created back in 2008, released in 2012 as social network for schools inspired by Stack Overflow. In 2017 it was refactored, repackaged and open-sourced.

Scoold can be deployed anywhere - Heroku, DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure or any VPS hosting provider. It's lightweight, the backend is handled by a separate service called Para. All the heavy lifting is delegated to Para which can also be configured to store the data in any of the popular databases. This makes the Scoold code base easy to read and can be learned quickly, even by junior developers.

Scoold Pro, the paid version of Scoold, has premium features which make it the perfect knowledge sharing platform for your company or team.

This project is fully funded and supported by Erudika - an independent, bootstrapped company.

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.)

Buy Scoold Pro and also get these premium features:

  • Slack integration
  • Mattermost integration
  • Microsoft Teams integration
  • SAML authentication support
  • Custom authentication support
  • SCIM 2.0 for automatic user provisioning
  • Mentions with notifications
  • File uploads (local, AWS S3, Azure Blob)
  • Account suspensions (permabans)
  • Anonymous posts
  • Unlimited spaces
  • Multiple admins
  • Multiple identity domains
  • Sticky / Favorite posts
  • Advanced syntax highlighting
  • Email digest of recent questions
  • Security notifications
  • Wiki-style answers

...and more!

Live DEMO

For admin access, go to the demo login page and click "Continue with Demo Login".

Documentation

The full documentation for Scoold is at scoold.com/documentation

Scoold architecture intro (or 'what the heck is Para?')

Scoold is a client application of the Para backend server. Almost every request to Scoold produces at least one request to Para as well. When you ask a question on Scoold, a create request is sent to Para to the location POST /v1/questions. Here are a few key points about that architecture:

  • A Para server can be hosted anywhere and store data inside any of the supported databases.
  • Para is a multi-tenant server which stores data in isolated environments called "apps".
  • One or more instance of Scoold (like a cluster) can connect to the same Para app environment and share the data.
  • Multiple separate Scoold websites can be powered by the same Para backend using different Para apps.
  • Each app environment is completely independent from others and has its own database table and search index.
  • Both Scoold and Para can be hosted on the same machine or on multiple machines, on different networks.
  • Scoold talks to Para via HTTP(S) so Para must be directly accessible from Scoold, but can also be hosted on a private network.

Head over to the documentation for detailed explanation of the Scoold architecture.

Scoold Pro cloud hosting

Support

You can get support here by submitting an issue. Also you can head over to the Gitter chat room for help. Issues related to Scoold Pro must be reported to Erudika/scoold-pro. Paid/priority support is also available.

Getting help

Blog

Read more about Scoold on our blog

Translating Scoold

You can translate Scoold to your language by copying the English language file and translating it. When you're done, change the file name from "lang_en.properties" to "lang_xx.properties" where "xx" is the language code for your locale. Finally, open a pull request here.

See full list of available translations in Scoold

You can also change the default language of Scoold for all users by setting scoold.default_language_code = "en", where instead of "en" you enter the 2-letter code of the language of your choice.

Building Scoold

To compile it you'll need JDK 8+ and Maven. Once you have it, just clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/erudika/scoold.git && cd scoold
mvn install

To run a local instance of Scoold for development, use:

mvn -Dconfig.file=./scoold-application.conf spring-boot:run

To generate a WAR package, run:

mvn -Pwar package

To generate the native image for your particaluar achitecture, run:

mvn -Pnative clean package

GraalVM is required to be installed before compiling the native image.

Contributing

  1. Fork this repository and clone the fork to your machine
  2. Create a branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Implement a new feature or fix a bug and add some tests
  4. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added a new feature')
  5. Push the branch to your fork on GitHub (git push origin my-new-feature)
  6. Create ne

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is scoold free to use?

scoold is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does scoold do?

The Stack Overflow clone for your team (self-hosted or hosted)

What is scoold written in?

scoold is primarily written in Java. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/Erudika/scoold, and it has 923 GitHub stars.