

Stackoverflow clone using Rails, Mongomapper and Mongodb - r11t
http://gitorious.org/shapado

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cheald
Hah. I'm writing my own Stackoverflow derivative using the same technology
stack - Rails, MM, and Mongodb (mostly as an excuse to learn MongoDB!). Sorta
wish I'd seen this first now, though it's been a great learning experience. :)

(My project is at <http://wowqu.com> \- it's quite a bit more domain-specific,
but it's been a lot of fun anyhow. :)

~~~
bmelton
For what it's worth, I prefer the look and feel of yours by quite a lot.
Everything above the top adsense block needs a little tweaking, but everything
below it is gorgeous.

~~~
cheald
That's quite a compliment - thank you. I'm very much a programmer, not a
designer - what do you dislike about the stuff up top? What could I do better?

~~~
bmelton
I'm not crazy about the logo; It isn't bad, but it does look like a (really
good) layman's attempt at creating a logo. I (also a developer) have the same
exact problem, in that I come up with a 'good enough' logo and usually stick
with it for longer than I should have. People LIKE logos, and honestly, if we
could have a nickel for every time an inferior product won market share due to
a better logo, we'd probably both be rich.

The "Questions, People, Ask a Question" are kind of the same way. The white
font looks a little off -- I might try a slightly softer off-white color, but
it also makes them stand out. A more experienced UI guy could tell you more
about it, certainly.

The login and signup aren't nearly prominent enough, I think. I had a hard
time finding them. If I played with the app more, I might discover that you've
solved the problem by prompting for login/registration on actions, which is
where I think they ought to be, or something, but they're also a little blah.

Lastly (and this is actually parallel to the adwords, but I'm throwing it in
because you asked) the double-turn-down effect on the search just bugs me. I
don't know why. If it were rounded on both ends, I'd probably be fine. If they
turned in opposite directions (ala Digg) I'd probably be fine. It also doesn't
scream 'search' to me either.

These might be the amateurish ramblings of a novice UI guy, so take them all
with a grain of salt, but I'd at least try to get some consultation with
somebody with more experience.

I really do love the layout, so please don't take any offense. I only say
because you asked, and I really think the overall design is nice, even if you
hadn't said you weren't a designer. The colors work, the transition from blue
to white in the content layer is solid. The wraparound labels on the
informational boxes may as well be gold-plated. The 'answers' and 'votes'
buttons are splendid too. Like I said, I like it.

~~~
cheald
_grin_ The logo is indeed a layman's attempt. My expertise with logo design
extends as far as "try Photoshop style sets until one works".

The nav items up there are definitely not optimal. I've been feeling that,
too, but I haven't found the right solution to them yet.

Login and signup could be a lot more prominent, definitely.

The search box style is a rendering bug, due to how different browsers handle
border-radius; I have that set to 15px, which produces nice round ends in
Firefox, but Webkit renders 15px of rounding on the top corners, then tries to
do the bottom corners and doesn't have any room left. It's on the to-fix list.

I really appreciate your feedback. I'm as much a novice as anyone here, and I
absolutely recognize that I'm probably breaking about sixty-six critical laws
of design somewhere, so feedback is good. I very much appreciate constructive
criticism - thank you, very much.

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dcu
also, shapado is able to import SE sites, check this question out:
[http://shapado.com/questions/can-i-import-a-stackexchange-
du...](http://shapado.com/questions/can-i-import-a-stackexchange-dump-into-s)

~~~
lanstein
papachito - that is a _sweet_ feature!

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10ren
Hey, looks great! Suggestion: small search box on the main page (like SO).
It's my first port of call.

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flyingyeti
Shapado seems like a nice, thorough Stack Exchange clone. Nice work. Maybe you
can give Gitorious.com some MongoDB love now ;)

~~~
papachito
We'll see what we can do ;)

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vaksel
another good benefit of clones like this, is that it'll get Fog Creek to lower
their prices for Stack Exchange.

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aaronblohowiak
that would be a mistake. does bugzilla / track / anything else lower the cost
of FogBugz? Make a premium product, charge a premium -- it a way to run a
small software shop that seems to work for the people involved.

~~~
papachito
What make you think we can't provide a premium product? We had many users
telling us they actually liked Shapado better than StackExchange, and not only
for the price, I mean feature wise.

~~~
stingraycharles
Perception is also a factor: if you charge a premium price, people will assume
you are the premium product.

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jwtanner
I immediately noticed the lack of polish. Shapado faces a very long tail of
interface improvements before it can begin to approach SO in quality.

~~~
papachito
You can use many themes, this is one of them <http://www.coders.es/>

~~~
jwtanner
Sorry to be so harsh but, the introduction of themes signals to me that the
developers have thrown their hands up in defeat. The alternative is to improve
the look and feel of the core design.

You guys have managed to rip off / borrow stackoverflow's look and feel (
which is good ) and moved the all text a few pixels off center, shade icons
that were unshaded, resize GUI elements. If you going to take so many GUI
elements, why not take everything?

~~~
papachito
We added themes because many of our users asked for them. They want to
differentiate, which is understandable.

The theme I linked to is not our main theme, the main them is this one:
<http://shapado.com>

People are free to make the SO theme look more like SO if they want to.

~~~
jwtanner
But you offered themes as a solution to a statement about UI quality, which is
it not. Also you don't have to do what your users ask for, saying no to bad
ideas is important.

Your not alone, the chromium team should have said no to themes as well.

~~~
swah
Curious... why do you think themes are a bad design choice for Chrome?

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jwtanner
This may just be a matter of taste in the case of chrome, I think they are
extremely ugly.

<http://is.gd/b0ydO>

~~~
swah
The "Themes by Google" ones are a little better.

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keithwarren
It is one thing to clone SO in an effort to give a FOSS choice to the
StackExchange format but trying to compete with SO by building a clone is
heading in the wrong direction. Challenging SO is not about technology, it is
about the number and quality of users. Metcalfe's law wins the day here.

~~~
jrockway
_Challenging SO is not about technology, it is about the number and quality of
users. Metcalfe's law wins the day here._

There are a lot of good discussion sites running terrible software, like LtU
and Perlmonks. This would allow them to keep their communities intact but
actually run software that doesn't actively discourage contributions. (Ever
use Perlmonks? _That_ 's why people hate Perl!)

~~~
blasdel
Yes, there are a ton of sites out there running terrible software that doesn't
fit how they use it. phpBB and vBulletin are a scourge on the internet's
communities. There's tons of mediocre Drupal installs out there, and generic
blogs where the clueless master just posts regular 'open threads'.

But I'll be damned if I can't think of a worse fit for any of these people
than a SO-style QA-wiki. The last thing they need is fucking badges!

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richardw
Great effort. SE did a very good thing to find a working model for Q&A sites,
and for that they'll do well. shapado is likely to reduce any rent-seeking
behaviour by SE, and spur on a bunch more innovation from them. Everybody
wins.

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thrdOriginal
I'm sure the first of many clones, copied down to the badge styles. Good work?
Since you're charging money for some aspect of it, it seems you should do a
better job of making it your own (I do like the watch feature).

~~~
papachito
We're not charging anything yet. When it's launched it'll be super polished
and I think it's already quite polished :). Note that the CSS is 100%
customizable, eg: <http://www.coder.es>

~~~
buro9
That link is not the link you are looking for.

~~~
jiaaro
it's coders.es (he posted it above as well)

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Poleris
Out of curiosity, what other StackOverflow clones are there out there and how
does Shapado compare to them? Is this the most mature out of them all or
simply notable because it is built using Rails?

~~~
patrickgzill
There is OSQA , based originally on some work done by Chinese programmers.
meta.osqa.net .

It is based on Django I think.

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code_duck
Why not differentiate the design a bit? The visual design with the oversized
text, excessive 'buttonage', and giant boxes/fonts for views and answers is
the worst part about the SE/SO system.

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DrJokepu
Great stuff!

As a bit tounge-in-cheek comment: Will Stackoverflow clones become the new
Twitter clients and the new new Hello World, demonstrating the capabilities of
technologies?

~~~
mreid
You forgot "custom blogging engine".

~~~
fizx
And PHP CMS circa 2003.

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jarsj
Nice work. I am curious to know how many human hours went into it.

~~~
dcu
<https://www.ohloh.net/p/shapado>

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papachito
I'm one of the dev, feel free to ask if you have any questions. The site is
running here: <http://shapado.com>

(we also have a mirror on github <http://github.com/patcito/shapado>)

~~~
JeremyChase
How do you track views? Are you doing a DB write on each question view?

~~~
sync

      def viewed!
        self.collection.update({:_id => self._id}, {:$inc => {:views_count => 1}}, :upsert => true)
      end
    

Not sure why it's an upsert, but there's your answer -- atomic increment.

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korch
Very nice, thanks for sharing! I had been hoping someone would open-source a
SE clone for Rails. And double-plus-good for having the feature of importing
SE sites right off the bat! I actually hate the limited way SE is using tags,
and have wanted to try making my own.

