Overview

Need a fast way to spin up a knowledge-sharing hub? Apache Answer is an open-source Q&A engine with a clean UI, role-based moderation, and a growing plugin ecosystem. Pair it with Clawcloud Run’s forever-free $5 container credit and App Store one-click installs, and you can be live in minutes. This guide walks through the setup, plus a few pro tips for tuning and backups.

1. Why Clawcloud Run + Apache Answer?

Clawcloud perks

• Free tier – GitHub-verified accounts get $5 in container credits every month; no card required.
• Solid specs – 4 vCPUs, 8 GB RAM, 10 Gbps outbound, enough for heavy traffic spikes.
• Point-and-click UX – A built-in App Store and Docker support keep ops overhead low.

Answer highlights

• Purpose-built Q&A – Questions, tags, voting, reputation—everything you expect from a modern Stack-style forum.
• Flexible storage – Runs on SQLite out of the box; switch to MySQL or Postgres when you scale.
• Plugin-ready – Add Markdown extensions, object-storage adapters, SSO, and more.

2. Deploying Answer in Three Steps

1. Create a Clawcloud Run account

Go to https://console.run.claw.cloud and sign in with GitHub. Pick the region closest to your users (five locations available).

2. Launch from the App Store

1. Open App Store → search Answer.
2. Click Deploy App. Wait ~3–5 minutes; when the container shows Running, open the temporary URL. The Answer setup wizard should appear.

3. Initial configuration

1. Choose the interface language.
2. Keep SQLite for a quick start.
3. Set site name, admin email, and password—store these safely.
4. Click Done to enter the community home page.

3. Level-Up & Extend

3.1 Custom domain & HTTPS

• Add a CNAME in Public Address and point your DNS to the generated hostname.
• Clawcloud auto-issues a Let’s Encrypt cert; allow 3–10 minutes for propagation.

3.2 Installing plugins (via custom image)

1. Create a Dockerfile: FROM apache/answer:latest RUN answer build --with github.com/apache/answer-plugins/render-markdown-codehighlight
2. Push the image to Docker Hub or a private registry.
3. In Clawcloud, choose Custom Image and redeploy.

3.3 Backups & migration

• File backup: Mount a volume or cron a tar of /data to cloud storage.
• DB switch: To move from SQLite to MySQL/Postgres, set the relevant DB_* env vars and restart with a fresh database.

4. Wrap-up

Clawcloud Run plus Apache Answer gives teams and communities a cost-free, high-performance Q&A platform with almost no setup friction. The only “gotcha” is plugin support—build a custom image once, then future updates are painless. Need more details? The official docs are a click away: https://answer.apache.org/docs/.

Spin up your instance today and start sharing knowledge.