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)

What are Points for?

Points are required to reach a particular Level in SIMAnswers. Admins can set the different privileges each user has on each level. Eg. Set users to require 200 Points to reach Level 2, and 10 questions per day is allowed at at Level 2. There are 7 Levels that can be configured altogether.

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
• Upload files together with their questions and/or answers
• Add code snippets to their questions and/or answers
• 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

Other features:

• Integrates with JomSocial's points system and AlphaUserPoints
• Integrates with JomSocial's activity stream
• JomSocial / Community Builder profile plugin to display user's QnA activities
• Special AJAX pagination that improves SEO. Search bots will be able to page through list of questions.
• Administer questions/answers/comments in the backend
• Admins can set whether to let users use a WYSIWYG editor to ask and answer questions
• Set ACL rules for every action. eg Only Authors and above can Ask Questions. Activities include Ask Questions, Answer Questions, Post Comments, Rate Questions/Answers, and Vote for Best Answer.

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 or 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.