Do any of you use Discourse?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have any of you used Discourse at all as your forum platform?

I'm particularly interested in those who have used the self-hosted version.

What do you think about it?

 

[AWS]

I installed it on a VM with Docker a few years ago. It was an infant then. Getting it installed and running was a pain. It was easy to customize once it was set up. I did a test import of a big database I had for testing. It was an old vbulletin database. After I figured out the converter, all done at command line, it went very well. I then installed a second instance and started Admins Zone on it.

Ran AZ on it for a couple years. Users liked it. There were no PM's and other features. Users din't mind. I would have stayed on Discourse if it wasn't for me falling ill. When I was well enough I couldn't get the VM to start so I scrapped it and restarted AZ on IPB.

I visit the Discourse site from time to time and I am very impressed with how far it's come. I am thinking about starting my next forum on it.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I visit the Discourse site from time to time and I am very impressed with how far it's come. I am thinking about starting my next forum on it.

Is there PMs and stuff like that now?

 

[AWS]

Is there PMs and stuff like that now?

Yes. Now they are part of the core. Along with other features you don't see in other software.

 

[Tracy]

About 6 months ago I fired cheap VPS (2vCPU/4GB RAM) and set it up. It was nice for what it was, but I usually want more features (articles, reviews and similar) for the sites I tend to run. It has some nice features if one is more interested in discussions in a more flowing format.
I didn't find it that hard to set up or maintain in the time I was playing with it. But you do need to be comfortable with using docker images, and generally it's the only web product you can easily run on your installation instance.

 

[AWS]

About 6 months ago I fired cheap VPS (2vCPU/4GB RAM) and set it up. It was nice for what it was, but I usually want more features (articles, reviews and similar) for the sites I tend to run. It has some nice features if one is more interested in discussions in a more flowing format.
I didn't find it that hard to set up or maintain in the time I was playing with it. But you do need to be comfortable with using docker images, and generally it's the only web product you can easily run on your installation instance.

I had all my sites on the same server at the time. It sort of runs in it's own little neighborhood with everything it needs in it.

 

[Tracy]

I had all my sites on the same server at the time. It sort of runs in it's own little neighborhood with everything it needs in it.

Yes, it runs in a docker image usually. And if you are using the standard port 80 for inbound connections, it's rather difficult to run it in the docker image that is capturing port 80 and then running another instance of a web server on the same port. They tend to conflict.
You CAN use the both PHP and Discourse by setting up something like nginx or HAProxy to be a proxy server and run another instance of an HTTP server on a different port than 80/443. But it is beyond most admins ability unless they are familiar with administering a linux box.

Run other websites on the same machine as Discourse

@pfaffman edited this heavily 2022.02.24. Blame me if it’s broken. If you want to run other websites on the same machine as Discourse, you need to set up an extra NGINX or HAProxy proxy in front of the Docker container. NOTE: This is for advanced admins This guide assumes you already have...

meta.discourse.org

Now, if you are talking about on the same hardware server but using different VM's (ProxMox, VMWare, SolusVM), that's a different matter.... as you basically are putting it in its own VPS.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Along with other features you don't see in other software.

Like?