A public version of 37signals' Basecamp?

Question

I'm using 37signals' Basecamp webapp for collaborating with many people on data standards. Generally I like the product. There are a few issues like not being able to easily follow a topic or wiki (writeboard) for changes. Their wiki-mechanism kind of sucks (finicky, no nested lists, tables, etc).

The biggest issue I have is that I can't seem to make everything public. Though you should need a login to contribute or collaborate, I want the outside world to see what we're working on as easily as possible. I want all of our great content to be search engine indexable. I'd like to not have a separate front end site for the world to see and a different site for us members to collaborate with.

Any webapps like Basecamp that I should be looking at instead?

Answer 1

One possible solution is to use a combination of Google Apps.

• Google Site for the public view and wiki
• Google Code for code sharing, issue tracking, tasks
• Google Docs for formal documentation
• Google Groups

You can get very creative with this. Good luck.

Answer 2

I have used SharePoint to solve that problem but unless you have a team of developers, I would not go down that road. I checked on AlternativeTo and there is a startup called TeamLab that may be just what you need. They even offer a Basecamp import feature. It is offerered as SaaS or Open Source software.