Discourse
Description
Discourse is the 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet. Use it as a mailing list, discussion forum, long-form chat room, and more!
Software Included
| Package | Version | License |
|---|---|---|
| Discourse | latest | GPL 2 |
| Docker CE | 19.03.12 | Apache 2 |
Getting started after deploying Discourse
Before you begin with your Discourse 1-Click App, you will need:
- Credentials for an SMTP server. These credentials are critical for account creation and for receipt of notifications in Discourse.
If you have an existing mail server, you can use those credentials. If you don't have or want to run a mail server, there are several providers where you can set up an SMTP account, such as SparkPost, Mailgun, Mailjet, or Mandrill.
-
A hostname (domain or subdomain). You’ll use this for your forum; you cannot use an IP address with Discourse.
-
An email address to use for the Discourse admin account.Additionally, Discourse requires at least 2GB of RAM, so make sure to choose a plan with enough memory during creation.After creating a Discourse One-Click Droplet, you'll need to connect to the Droplet via SSH to complete the setup.ssh root@your_pod_public_ipv4 Once you connect, you'll be prompted to complete Discourse's configuration by entering the three details mentioned earlier: an email address for the admin account, the domain or subdomain for Discourse, and the SMTP server credentials.
To get started, the following configuration details will be required.
- Email Address for the Discourse Admin Account - The hostname (domain or subdomain) you will use for Discourse - Details for the SMTP server your Discourse install will use to send email - Email Address to use if you wish to set up a LetsEncrypt SSL certificate
If you want to skip the initial Discourse setup, you can press CTRL+C. The next time you log in, you’ll be prompted again. Alternatively, you can re-run the setup script any time by running bash /opt/digitalocean/setup_discourse.sh.
Once you have provided the requested information to the setup script it will take approximately 10 minutes for the script to install and configure the latest version of Discourse on your pod.
Once you’ve completed the initial Discourse setup, you can create a Discourse account on the new forum by visiting the hostname you chose in your browser.
Enabling HTTPS
We strongly recommend using SSL to secure the connection between the Discourse server and the clients connecting to it. Discourse provides the following resources on setting up SSL: