BioStar is a Python and Django based Q&A software. It is a simple, generic, flexible and extensible Q&A framework.

The site has been developed by scientists and for scientists. It aims to address the requirements and needs that scientific communities have. Biostar is used to run several science oriented Q&A sites:

• Biostars Bioinformatics Q&A at: https://www.biostars.org
• Galaxy User Support: https://biostar.usegalaxy.org
• Bioconductor User Support: https://support.bioconductor.org/
• Neuroinformatics Q&A: http://www.neurostars.org

The software is open source and free to use under the MIT License.

• Q&A: questions, answers, comments, user moderation, voting, reputation, badges, threaded discussions
• RSS Planet: feed aggregation from different sources
• External authentication: authenticate users with a different web service
• Email integration: import previous posts from mailing lists
• Low resource utilization and easy deployment.

Requirements: Python 2.7

The documentation:

• Install
• Manage
• Deploy
• Customize

The source for the documentation can be found in the docs folder.

From the biostar source directory:

# Install the requirements.
pip install --upgrade -r conf/requirements/base.txt

# Initialize database, import test data, index for searching and run the server.
./biostar.sh init import index run

Visit http://www.lvh.me:8080 to see the site loaded with demo data.

The www.lvh.me domain resolves to 127.0.0.1 your local host with a proper domain name. You may just as well use http://localhost:8080 or http://127.0.0.1.

In the demo site the user emails are built from the database ids like so: 1@lvh.me, 2@lvh.me. The demo user passwords are identical to the emails and you may use these to log into your test site as any of the users.

The user with the email 1@lvh.me has staff level permissions and can also access the admin interface at http://www.lvh.me:8080/admin/.

Enjoy.

Biostar versions and upgrade path: ialbert#400

We may be able to provide support for organizations or institutions. For more information contact admin@biostars.org

• Parnell LD, Lindenbaum P, Shameer K, Dall'Olio GM, Swan DC, et al. [2011 BioStar: An Online Question & Answer Resource for the Bioinformatics Community.] (http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1002216) PLoS Comput Biol 7(10): e1002216. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002216

List of contributors: https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central/graphs/contributors