SIMAnswers

SIMAnswers is the complete Questions and Answers solution for Joomla. In fact, imagine Yahoo Answers for Joomla! SIMAnswers works in exactly the same way as Yahoo Answers, down to the last detail!

Admins can create categories and subcategories, set points and levels for different activities, and administer violation reports. By creating appropriate categories, you can create MUCH more meaningful content to your website. With more questions asked and answers provided, search engines will rank your site much higher (just like Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia, with a ton of user created content).

Admins can set points for the following actions:

• Starting participation
• Choosing best answer
• Login/visit per day
• Answering a question
• Voting on an answer
• Selected as best answer
• Receive thumbs up on best answer
• Asking a question (minus points)
• Spam answer removed (minus points)

Users can do a TON of things with SIMAnswers. Here's a quick list:

• Ask questions
• Answer questions
• Provide sources for their answers
• Select a best answer and rate it
• Answer open question, vote undecided questions, or discover resolved questions
• Email interesting questions to friends (using OpenInviter technology)
• Bookmark questions using social bookmarks (includes Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Yahoo MyWeb, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks, Technorati, Reddit)
• Retweet on Twitter with a click
• Add to their private watchlists
• Add a question as interesting/starred
• Select a best answer or put their questions to a vote
• Extend question expiry by twice the time
• Comment on questions
• Report violations for questions, answers or comments
• Thumb up/down a question or answer, providing better community feedback
• Search questions easily, or with an advanced search feature

Every user has his own dashboard that displays his statistics, including Total Answers, Best Answers, Open Questions, Voting Questions, Resolved Questions, Activity Summary (points, levels, starred questions etc), and a list of the user's answers, questions, starred questions and watchlist.

SIMAnswer is fully integrated with Community Builder and JomSocial, but does not require them to work.

Types of Questions

There are 3 types of questions: Open Questions, Undecided Questions,and Answered Questions.

Open Questions
Open questions are questions that have not expired. The time before a question expires is 4 days by default, and is configurable by the admin. Anyone is free to provide their answers for open questions.

Undecided Questions
Undecided questions are questions that are being put to a vote. There are 2 possible scenarios whereby questions are put to a vote:

1. Question expired
2. Asker decided to put it to vote before question expires

Once a question is put to a vote, no more new answers can be given. Note that if a question expires before an answer is provided, it will be removed and the points (for asking a question) will be returned to the asker.

Answered Questions
Answered questions are questions where a best answer has been selected. There are 2 ways to select a best answer:

1. Asker personally selects a best answer
2. A best answer is voted (if the question has been put to vote)

After a question has been answered, users will be able to leave comments.

System Requirements

• Joomla 1.5
• JSON (comes with PHP 5.2.0)
• SIMAnswers requires cURL and Ioncube. Although every professional grade webhost supports them, please consult your host first if you're unsure.

Pricing

Pricing Information can be found here.