Installing Answer Q&A Community Software on Ubuntu 25.04

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Answer is an open-source knowledge-based community software. You can use it to quickly build your Q&A community for product technical support, customer support, user communication, and more.

Prerequisites

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• Root access to your Ubuntu 25.04 server.

Install Docker and Docker Compose

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First, install Docker and Docker Compose.

apt install docker.io

Output:

root@server:~# apt install docker.io -y
Installing:                     
  docker.io

Installing dependencies:
  bridge-utils  containerd  dns-root-data  dnsmasq-base  pigz  runc  ubuntu-fan

Suggested packages:
  ifupdown    cgroupfs-mount  debootstrap    docker-compose-v2  rinse     | zfsutils
  aufs-tools  | cgroup-lite   docker-buildx  docker-doc         zfs-fuse

Install Docker Compose using following command,

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Output:

root@server:~# curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 70.2M  100 70.2M    0     0  67.6M      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:--  112M

Check if Docker Compose was installed successfully by running,

docker-compose --version

Output:

root@server:~# docker-compose --version
Docker Compose version v2.35.1

Running Answer with Docker

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Once Docker and Docker Compose are installed, you can install Answer using Docker.

Run the following commands:

mkdir answer && cd answer
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/answerdev/answer/main/docker-compose.yaml
docker-compose up

Restart the Docker service:

systemctl restart docker

Configure the Answer Q&A Community Software

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Access your server's IP address on port 9080:

http://yourserver-ip-address:9080

Replace yourserver-ip-address with your server’s actual IP.

You will be greeted with the Answer setup screen.

Choose your preferred language:

Configure the Database:

Answer supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite as database backends.

For testing purposes, you can use SQLite (no extra setup needed).

If you prefer MySQL/MariaDB, you must set it up first. You can follow this LAMP Stack installation guide.

Fill in your site information:

• Site Name: Choose a name for your Q&A platform.
• Site URL: The web address where your site will be hosted.
• Contact Email: Email for user/admin communication.
• Admin Account: Set up your first admin username and password.

Once complete, click Done. You’ll see a success message.

Login to Answer Q&A

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Go to the login page, enter the admin email and password created earlier.

After logging in, you can explore and configure your Q&A platform.

Running Answer in the Background with Docker

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To run Answer in detached mode (background):

docker-compose up --detach

Expected output:

root@server:~/answer# docker-compose up --detach
WARN[0000] /root/answer/docker-compose.yaml: `version` is obsolete
[+] Running 1/0
 ✔ Container answer-answer-1  Running

🎉 This concludes the installation and setup of Answer Q&A Community Software on Ubuntu 25.04.