I am developing a Q & A Site for my students. I find stackoverflow an amazing example and would like to have something similar(if not this feature rich) for my course.
I am a sytem programmer not much familiar with web-application development. How do I begin. Database scheme, features, AJAXness etc. Can I get some existing codebase I can build on top of? Something opensource?
Language of choice is PHP. Any pointers are welcome.
Thank you in advance.
Edited: Added info
It shouldn't be hard to replicate using PHP/MySQL. It's not a very complicated site. plan out how you want all of the tables/classes to be laid out (Questions, Answers, Users, Tags,Rep,Badges,etc.) and start coding.
Is there any particular part that you are confused about or looking for advice about?
It would be reasonably trivial to create something similar as a learning exercise, but the real value behind the stackoverflow site is the polish, attention to detail and vision that's gone into the site and associated branding/marketing, etc.
Irrespective, you'll probably find that you get more answers if you do the ground work yourself and then post questions for any specific architecture/design/implementation issues you get stuck on.