Askbot can be used both as as dedicated site and as an application within a larger site. There are still issues to resolve to make askbot a truly reusable app, but some are already solved.
This page is a guide for using askbot as an independent app and it is somewhat technical.
Askbot has a bundled application for user login and registration, but it can be replaced with any other. Just remove 'askbot.deps.django_authopenid' from the INSTALLED_APPS, remove 'askbot.deps.django_authopenid.backends.AuthBackend' from the AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS , install another registration app and modify LOGIN_URL accordingly.
There are three caveats.
Firstly, if you are using some other login/registration app, please disable feature “settings”->”data entry and display”->”allow posting before logging in”.
This may be fixed in the future by adding a snippet of code to run right after the user logs in - please ask at askbot forum if you are interested.
Secondly, disable setting “settigs”->”user settings”->”allow add and remove login methods”. This one is specific to the builtin login application.
One more thing to keep in mind is in askbot each user has records for email subscription settings, and these will be missing when he/she registers via some alternative login application. This is not a big problem and should not lead to errors, however some users may miss email notifications until their records complete.
The email subscription settings are created automatically when certain pages are visited, but there is a way to accelerate this process by calling management command:
python manage.py add_missing_subscriptions
Alternatively, you can insert the following call just after the new user account is created user.add_missing_askbot_subscriptions()