Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Few days ago, we have mentioned Qhub, which is a simple way to create a Q&A website. However, hosted version is only available to us only. How about a Q&A system that is open source and also let us install on our own server? Our readers have pointed out the following Open Source Q&A Systems.

OSQA is an Open Source Q&A System written using Django. Users can ask and answer questions, comment and vote for the questions of others and their answers. Both questions and answers can be revised and improved. Questions can be tagged with the relevant keywords to simplify future access and organize the accumulated material. OSQA can be downloaded from the project’s GitHub repository at http://github.com/rickross/osqa. It is under GNU General Public License.

Shapado is another Stack Overflow-like app written in Ruby on Rails, mongomapper and mongodb. It is available under the GNU Affero General Public License. Shapado can be downloaded from Gitorious at http://gitorious.org/shapado.

Requirements: Django or Ruby on Rails Framework
OSQA: http://osqa.net/
Shapado: http://shapado.com/
License: GPL License

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Qhub is a simple way to create a Q&A website. While other Q&A websites are great for information sharing and communities, Qhub offers a more targeted community managed by the people that are interested in that particular subject area.

Each group is set up and started by an owner. Friends, colleagues, club members and more are invited to join and the questions can begin. Qhub offers the ability to customize each site. There is full management of your site, its members and content. It also offers the ability to use your own domain name.

If someone asking you a question and you have the answer, why not open up that knowledge to the web community for their and your benefit?

Requirements: -
Demo: http://help.qhub.com/
License: Creative Commons License

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Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable discussion forum for the web. With over 450 plugins so far, Vanilla is ideal for custom community solutions. Anyone can download and use Vanilla for free. If you do not have a web space, you might be interested in the hosted version of Vanilla as well.

Vanilla lets you have total control over the appearance of your forum so it can completely mesh with the look & feel of your site. Vanilla is fast. Setting up a forum takes moments, using Vanilla is a breeze. With Vanilla’s Pages feature, you can add custom pages to your forum and turn it into a complete website. Add a bunch of plugins and you’ve got a totally interactive website to go along with your forum.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://vanillaforums.org/
License: GPL License

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Tweetable is a lightweight jQuery plugin which enables you to display your twitter feed on your site quickly and easily. More than just displaying the feeds you can highlight @replys as well as links being dynamically generated for ease of use.

To use Tweetable simply create an empty div and apply an ID or class of your choice. There are some added parameters that you can pass into tweetable for extra functionality. as default you must enter your username, you can also control the date and set the limit of tweets you wish to display.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://theodin.co.uk/tools/tutorials/jqueryTutorial/plugins/tweetable/
License: MIT, GPL License

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Blog Perfume has released a set of Free Social Media Icons some time ago. Yesterday, they have just added another 10 social media icons to the pack.

New Circular Social Media Icons includes AIM, Bebo, eBay, Hi5, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Ning, Orkut and Yahoo Messenger. They includes 3 sizes for 17 icons: 128×128, 64×64 and 32×32. There is also an icon template PSD file included! What kind of age are we living in when you cannot find a good set of simple, sleek, circular social media icons? So here they are.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.blogperfume.com/new-27-circular-social-media-icons…
License: Creative Commons License

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Komodo Media has developed over 80 refined, amazing social networking icons for the top networks around. The Social Network Icon Pack consists of 40+ 16 pixel x 16 pixel icons and 40+ 32 pixel by 32 pixel icons all in 32-bit PNG format. Social Network Icon Pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/06/social…
License: Creative Commons 3.0 License

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Since 2005, Socialcast has been a leader in the development of on-demand collaboration software. Socialcast unites traditional intranet features with social networking technology to empower employees to expand, create and share knowledge across the enterprise. Socialcast is a simple, secure, free collaboration tool that helps employees communicate in real time.

Recently, Sociacast has announced that all new corporate networks will be free to join and use for employees and site administrators. Additionally, administration rights for these networks are completely free. Administrators can manage user access and customize the site’s look and feel at no charge.

This exciting news opens up access to Socialcast’s Enterprise-ready tool for thousands of organizations across the globe. Socialcast is simple to use for new companies and their employees, and at the same time provides a robust, useful and customized experience for companies that may be using other free tools on the market.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.socialcast.com/
License: License Free

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After the success of Blogging Icons, Blog Perfume has just released Social Media Icons Pack which comes in really handy when integrating social media sites to your blog.

Social Media Icons Pack includes 3 sizes for 17 icons: 128×128, 64×64 and 32×32. There is an icon for the following: Blogger, Delicious, DesignFloat, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Google, a heart icon that will work for anything (such as bookmark), MySpace, Reddit, an RSS icon, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo! and YouTube.

These icons are released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. You are free to use them on both personal and commercial projects.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.blogperfume.com/social-media-icons…
License: Creative Commons License

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Fire Eagle is a new service designed to make it safe and easy to build and use location-aware applications and services. It’s a place where users can store and manage information about their current location that trusted apps and sites can update or access.

Want to make your website or mobile application more relevant or responsive to a user’s location? Or maybe you’ve found a way to capture user location and want to find cool uses for this info? By doing the heavy lifting for you and connecting you to a community of geo-developers, Fire Eagle makes it easier to build location-aware services. And Fire Eagle is completely free to use.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/
License: License Free

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Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform – enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site. Enable your users to seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site. Find their friends who also use your site. And also, share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook.

With Facebook Connect, users can connect their Facebook account with any partner Web site using their simplified and trusted authentication. Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. Users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow them, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up to date.

Update: You can also look at the video which shows you how to “Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes“.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php
License: Facebook TOS

• 2 Comments