SiteForge is a software project management tool for open source and distributed development teams to use to manage software projects. We call it a Collaborative Development Platform. Other names for it include a Collaborative Development Environment (CDE), or a Source Control Management (SCM) system.

What SiteForge does is bring together the various aspects of a software project into one place, including source code access (CVS), bug/issue tracking, project members, discussion forums, documentation, product release downloads, and news announcements. This allows you to better keep track of all aspects of a project and manage it smoothly.

SiteForge is similar to the SourceForge.net website, but in software form. Similar projects include GForge, Savane, GBorg, and Trac. The reason we wrote SiteForge instead of using these is that some of them lacked features we needed (for example, Trac doesn't do multiple projects very well), some were lacking documentation or support, and some of them were exceedingly difficult to install and administer, leaving us uncomfortable about the idea of relying on them for all the critical data in our projects. So instead we set out to build our own that would be easier to install, reliable, secure, and well-supported.

SiteForge is based on the Sitellite open source content management system, which provided many necessary features out-of-the-box, and saved us months of effort in writing SiteForge. In fact, version 1.0 of SiteForge was developed by a single developer in less than a month from planning to launch.

Key Features

• Manage multiple software projects organized by category
• Straight-forward installation process
• User-friendly and intuitive web-based interface
• CVS repository integration
• Bug and issue tracking
• Project discussion forums
• Documentation management
• Release download management
• Project and site-wide news
• Real-time visitor and download statistics
• RSS feeds to track project news, issues, and discussions
• Cross-referencing across all aspects of a project, including documentation, bugs, forum posts, and even news
• Based on the Sitellite CMS, which provides advanced features such as user access control, page editing, a search engine, and more