An open-source, self-hostable Q&A engine. Questions, ranked answers, tags and user profiles — Stack-Overflow-style, server-rendered, on clean crawlable URLs. No login required to read.
- Reads without an account. Every question, tag and profile is a plain HTML page at a stable URL — great for search, archiving and the open web.
- Ranked answers. Voting, accepted answers, and "related questions" links.
- Tiny. One Node service + a database. Runs on a small box.
- Boring URLs on purpose.
/q/:id/:slug,/tag/:name,/u/:handle.
The reference instance is sub-etha-answers.tech, a galactic knowledge base. Jump in:
- All questions → https://sub-etha-answers.tech/questions
- Browse tags → https://sub-etha-answers.tech/tags
- Community → https://sub-etha-answers.tech/users
A few good threads:
- How do I avoid the Total Perspective Vortex?
- How to improve the Infinite Improbability Drive
- Best practice for surviving Vogon poetry
- What happens if you translate hyperspace-bypass paperwork?
Popular tags: #hyperspace · #babel-fish · #vogon-bureaucracy · #improbability-drive · #towel-care
More threads, tags and users in docs/BROWSE.md.
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/askhub.git
cd askhub
npm install
cp .env.example .env # set DATABASE_URL, PUBLIC_BASE_URL
npm run migrate
npm start # -> http://localhost:8080Deployment notes in docs/SELF_HOSTING.md.
| Route | What it is |
|---|---|
/ |
Landing / hot questions |
/questions |
All questions (paginated) |
/q/:id/:slug |
A question + ranked answers |
/tag/:name |
Questions by tag |
/tags |
Tag index |
/u/:handle |
A user profile |
/users |
Community index |
/sitemap.xml |
Sitemap |
The HTTP API mirrors these paths and returns JSON — see docs/API.md.
- Node.js >= 20
- Postgres >= 14 (SQLite works for small instances)
Plain HTML, stable URLs, no login — friendly to archivers and dataset builders:
wget -r -np https://sub-etha-answers.tech/questionsSee CONTRIBUTING.md.
Part of a family of small, SEO-first, self-hostable web apps:
- registry-kit — publish public records as crawlable HTML
- storefront-kit — SEO-first storefront / catalog framework
- sub-etha — self-hostable microblogging server
MIT © the askhub contributors. See LICENSE.
Tags: qa, q-and-a, questions-and-answers, stackoverflow, knowledge-base, forum, self-hosted, ssr, seo, no-auth, crawl, dataset