Scoold

Scoold is an open-source, self-hosted Q&A and knowledge sharing platform designed for teams and organizations. It provides a structured environment for internal information exchange, allowing users to post questions, provide answers, and build a searchable knowledge base. The platform is designed to facilitate the long-term retention of institutional knowledge by organizing discussions into a queryable format.

The application is deployed as a web server and is built using the Spring Boot framework. It can be hosted on various cloud providers, virtual private servers, or local infrastructure. The system separates the frontend client from the data management layer to allow for flexible deployment and scaling across different environments. Users interact with the platform via a responsive web browser interface.

Key features

• Reputation and voting system with customizable badges
• Full-text search and location-based filtering of posts
• Spaces for creating isolated groups of questions and users
• GFM markdown support with syntax highlighting for code
• LDAP and social login integration for user authentication
• RESTful API defined with OpenAPI 3.0
• Email notifications for comments and post replies
• Internationalization with support for RTL languages
• Webhooks with signature signing

Scoold utilizes a specific architecture where the client application connects to a separate backend service called Para. Para handles the data persistence and is database-agnostic, meaning it can be configured to store information in various popular databases. This multi-tenant backend allows multiple Scoold instances to connect to the same Para environment to share data, or separate Scoold websites to use different Para apps on a single server. Both components can be hosted on the same machine or distributed across different networks via HTTP or HTTPS. The frontend is built with Materialize CSS and jQuery to maintain a lightweight footprint.

This software is intended for organizations requiring a private, internal forum for technical documentation and team collaboration.