No longer live?

[mgboydcom]

It looks like this is no longer live at Honolulu. I see the wayback machine URL has been used to show users what it used to look like back in the day.

I was hoping for two additions to the readme:

• a list of links to cities that are using this.
• a brief para explaining what the policy obstacles/decisions were in removing this as a service being provided by the city? That would help other initiatives build sustainability into their projects.

I'm happy to research and do both of those things - do i just try and add a pull request to make those additions?

[mapmeld]

Oh hey, I reactivated a free dyno on Heroku: https://hnlgovanswers.herokuapp.com/ Categories work but full-text search doesn't =(

One of the big reuses of Answers is Oakland Answers! http://answers.oaklandnet.com/

18F was going to use it for immigration questions, but it hasn't been updated for a year https://github.com/18F/answers

I never talked to Honolulu about this directly, but there were issues which many other civic apps face:

• city government changed
• it's a Rails app, and the city had one or two devs who knew any Rails
• it's a Heroku app, and the city had limited cloud experience
• some Heroku addons, for example our memcache, got discontinued or switched to paid plans, so setting up new instances and doing maintenance was confusing
• questions and answers on the site are written in Markdown instead of a WYSIWYG editor

[snajmi]

Thanks for reactivating the Heroku instance, @mapmeld!

@mgboydcom Here's a partial list of cities where it was redeployed, last researched a year ago, so there might be more (if you research and find more, please add them here!):

Honolulu Answers was replicated by several cities/countries (some of these links no longer appear to be working and I don't have the updated URLs):

Oakland Answers: http://answers.oaklandnet.com/
Durban Answers: http://durbananswers.herokuapp.com/
Peru (Lambayeque region): http://consulta.progob.org.pe/
Anchorage Answers (Alpha): http://www.anchorageanswers.com/
Rehnuma (KP Province, Pakistan): http://www.kprehnuma.info
Muenster FAQ: https://github.com/codeformuenster/muenster_faq
18F (US Federal Govt): https://github.com/18F/answers
Sacramento Answers: https://github.com/code4sac/sacramento_answers
Rockford Answers: http://www.codeforrockford.com/news/rockford-answers/
SaltLake Answers: https://github.com/OpenSaltLake/saltlake_answers
Western Michigan (doesn't appear to be working now): http://www.wmgreenguide.com/

And has many other forks on GitHub (a total of 96 forks). Plus, it inspired a few others that weren't actual GitHub redeployments (including Verificalo: http://verificalo.mx/respuestas).

Re: obstacles -- the biggest issue was that the city government administration changed, as @mapmeld pointed out. It actually had a WYSIWYG editor (Markdown was optional), so I don't think that was an issue, actually.

[mgboydcom]

Thanks all, if it is okay, i will have a go at updating the readme so that it shares some of this information and will send through a pull request. I might quickly reach out to Honolulu first if i get a chance in the next day or so, m.

[amoose]

18F's most recent implementation is with myUSCIS
https://my.uscis.gov/helpcenter/article/what-is-myuscis
^ This version is heavily customized, but the 18F version is the base.

[snajmi]

@mapmeld @hale @amirbey Any idea how we can get search to work again on the instance Nick set up at https://hnlgovanswers.herokuapp.com/ ?

[mapmeld]

the only free search add-on that I see with a free plan is searchbox: https://elements.heroku.com/addons/searchbox

[ssfinney]

I didn't work on this project, so I don't know if this is what you need, but Algolia seems to be a popular option lately: https://elements.heroku.com/addons/algoliasearch

It also has a small free plan.