Pablo Corral wrote:

Hi all,

I would like to meet people using/working/exploring Discourse in Madrid.

I'am happy to organize a meeting between September and October, in the most convenient moment when we have at least 10 participants.

Please, shout if you are interested in participate on it.

Regards,
Pablo

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Steve Pasetti wrote:

I was scrolling down a list of posts, and at some point during scrolling I would start seeing these buttons "1 replies", "2 replies" etc. fade in... but then I'd scroll up and I wouldn't see the button... it looks like these are set to fade in when you hover over, or when they're in a certain section of the viewport. This is very confusing, because if you're scrolling down fast, then notice a reply and want to go back to it, it's hard to find unless you scroll up the page enough where it fades into view. Why make it fade in and out at all?

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JP Gordon wrote:

It would be a nice option to have a modifiable home view (say, in Preferences). Thus, a user could select "Latest" as the default home view and another user could have "Categories".

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Arpit Jalan wrote:

Ok, so you want to deploy your own instance of Discourse, and looking from where to start? You've come to the right place, here I'll walk you through the installation steps with the help of screenshots, so you won't find yourself lost, let's begin this wonderful journey.

Unlike many other Rails Apps the deployment of Discourse is extremely simple thanks to awesome Docker Image by @sam, all you need is a ssh access to cloud server. In this guide I'll assume that you are using Digital Ocean, while the steps will work fine on other cloud servers as well.

The below guide assumes that you have no knowledge of Ruby/Rails, Shell, so it will be detailed. Feel free to skip steps which you think, you are comfortable with.

Create new Digital Ocean Droplet

Discourse Team recommends a minimum of 1 GB Ram, so that's what we are gonna go with. For the sake of simplicity we will name the Hostname as discourse.

step_1.png1040x689 97.1 KB

We will install Discourse on Ubuntu 12.04.3 x64 as this is recommended in Official Documentation.

step_2.png1073x629 81.6 KB

Once you will complete with above steps you will receive a mail from Digital Ocean, providing root users password. (In case you have entered your SSH keys, then you don't require password to login).

Access your newly created Droplet

To access the droplet, type in following command in your terminal:

ssh root@162.243.201.40

Replace 162.243.201.40 with the IP address you got from Digital Ocean.

It will ask your permission to connect, type yes, and then it will ask you for root's password. The root's password is in your mail which Digital Ocean sent you. Type in the password and you will be welcomed by newly installed Ubuntu Server.

Install Git

To install Git, you just need to type in the command:

sudo apt-get install git

and you are good to go.

Generate SSH Key

It is highly recommended to set SSH key, because chances are, you may need to access rails console for debugging purposes, and it's only possible if you have SSH access preconfigured. It can't be done after bootstrapping the app.

You will need to generate SSH key on Server (Droplet), type in following commands

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"
ssh-add id_rsa

(We want the default settings so when asked to enter a file in which to save the key, just press enter. Taken from this guide)

Install Docker

Run following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-raring linux-headers-generic-lts-raring

Now we will perform a system reboot:

sudo reboot

Above command will log you out from ssh session, ssh in again:

ssh root@IP_ADDRESS

replace IP_ADDRESS with your IP Address.

Type in following commands:

sudo sh -c "wget -qO- https://get.docker.io/gpg | apt-key add -"
sudo sh -c "echo deb http://get.docker.io/ubuntu docker main\
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lxc-docker

Install Discourse

If you have reached this step, Congratulations! You have already done all the hard work, now you have a brand new Ubuntu Server with Docker installed. All you need to do now is install Discourse itself, which is the most easy step. Keep Calm.

Create a /var/docker folder where all the docker related stuff will reside:

mkdir /var/docker

Now we will clone the Official Discourse Docker Image in /var/docker folder:

git clone https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse_docker.git /var/docker

Make sure to copy and run the above command as is, otherwise you will face problem which I faced.

Let's switch to /var/docker directory:

cd /var/docker

Now we will copy the samples/standalone.yml file and place it inside containers folder by name app.yml, so the path will become containers/app.yml, type in command:

cp samples/standalone.yml containers/app.yml

Now we need modify the newly copied app.yml with our default variables:

nano containers/app.yml

Nano is suggested by @riking because it works like a text editor, just use your arrow keys. Hit Ctrl-O to save and Ctrl-X to exit. In below screenshot I am using Vim.

You will see something like:

You may modify the file as per your requirement, but for the sake of simplicity I will only modify two variables DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME.

Notice that I renamed the DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME to discourse.techapj.com, this means that I want to host my instance of Discourse on http://discourse.techapj.com/, for this to work properly you will need to modify DNS Records (I will post a separate guide to configure DNS Records).

Mail Setup

This step is required to successfully set up mail settings for Discourse.

It is recommended to set mail settings before bootstrapping your app, if you are advanced user, you need to put your mail credentials in app.yml file.

If you are a beginner, now is the good time to create a free account on Mandrill (Discourse recommended), and put your Mandrill credentials (available on Mandrill Dashboard) in above file. The required information are DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT, DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD.

Add SSH Key

If you successfully generated the ssh key as described in step: Generate SSH Key, get the generated key using following command

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the entire output and paste it in ssh_key param, in app.yml file.

That's it, you're all set to bootstrap your Discourse instance.

Bootstrap Discourse

Save the app.yml file, and run following command:

sudo ./launcher bootstrap app

This command may take some time, but it's doing all the hard work for you. Go drink some coffee, while this command is automagically configuring the Discourse environment for you.

When this command executes, type in the following command to start instance of your Discourse app:

sudo ./launcher start app

Congratulations! You have your own live instance of Discourse running on the host you provided in app.yml file at the time of setup.

discourse_succcess.png1279x457 63.5 KB

You can also access your instance of Discourse by visiting your IP_ADDRESS.

Access Admin

If you configured DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and mail settings properly, your email will be auto activated and will be made Admin by default.

In case your account is not flagged as admin (which is rare, but is apparently being reported by some users), try ssh'ing in your container (to follow these steps, you are required to provide SSH key in app.yml file):

./launcher ssh my_container
sudo -iu discourse
cd /var/www/discourse
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails c
u = User.last
u.admin = true
u.save

Voilà, you are now the admin of your own Discourse installation!

Okay, that's it for this guide. In my next post I'll talk in detail about more advanced topics like Configuring mail, Tweaking admin, SSH access to running containers, etc.

Please provide your feedback, if anything needs to be improved, don't hesitate. Also the fine folks here at Discourse are always ready to help you, in case you face any problem.

Note: Please go through below posts first, before asking problems, chances are someone else might have ran into exact same problem, and answer was available right here, all along. If you still can't find the answer, please do ask, someone else might be facing the exact same problem.

I'll try to update this guide as frequently as possible.

[Last Update: February 18, 2014]

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Sander Datema wrote:

People on my forum would like to get a mail when a new topic is made in a category. Then they can decide if they want to have a look. They don't need notifications for every new post in those topics (as is possible now).

The digest doesn't work for them, as it's only sent once a day at minimum.

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John Grasty wrote:

First, I realize that Discourse is developed for use on Ubuntu, and I'm on my own venturing in the dangerous land of other distributions--let alone the BSDs. I know have a working installation of Discourse on a FreeBSD 10 server that didn't require massive fiddling (a few gems have issues compiling).

Second, I'm not a developer, and I have little (read none) Ruby experience. Sorry if I have missed something on the Kindergarden level.

Here's the situation:

• ImageMagick 6.8.0.7 works from the command line.
• The ImageMagick warning appears in the dashboard.
  • Yet, in the ruby console:
    2.0.0-p353 :002 > system("command -v convert >/dev/null;")
    => true

• I disabled the ImageMagick check in app/jobs/regular/generate_avatars.rb to get Discourse to attempt to use ImageMagick, but it fails. Here's the a sample of the log output:

  Started POST "/users/johngrasty/preferences/avatar" for 71.85.54.229 at 2014-02-18 02:48:02 +0000
  Processing by UsersController#upload_avatar as JSON
  Parameters: {"files"=>[#@tempfile=#, @original_filename="castle.jpg", @content_type="image/jpeg", @headers="Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"files[]\"; filename=\"castle for prayer card.jpg\"\r\nContent-Type: image/jpeg\r\n">], "username"=>"johngrasty"}
  Completed 200 OK in 31ms (Views: 0.3ms | ActiveRecord: 18.5ms)
  Failed to create avatar 120 for /uploads/default/9/703d3afcaef170f4.jpg from /var/www/discourse/public/uploads/default/9/703d3afcaef170f4.jpg[0]
  Failed to create avatar 240 for /uploads/default/9/703d3afcaef170f4.jpg from /var/www/discourse/public/uploads/default/9/703d3afcaef170f4.jpg[0]

• From the ruby console, this command works though Jobs::GenerateAvatars.new.perform(user_id: 2, upload_id: 8)

Is there any way to get more detailed logging to see why ImageMagick is not working? Once again, I know that this is an unsupported setup, so I don't expect any handholding, but a point in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

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Martina Mitseva wrote:

Hello there!

I would like to ask if it is possible to list " the most popular" discussions on right side on the home page.

Unfortunately I can't show you an attachment, because it says that I am still a new user and I can't upload picture...

I think we can list them here, right next to the API Integrations section.
So the user doesn't need to click to see them. There might be a function in the software to list most commonly read threads.
But I don´t know how to make it.

Thanks in advance!

Martina

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Erlend Sogge Heggen wrote:

Continuing the discussion from All the options to deploy Discourse with their relative pros and cons:

I suggest running an openly editable Jekyll wiki, probably on GitHub, with editing support via prose.io. You could enable plugins the simple way or the advanced way. Then you could use @trident's awesome Jekyll integration plugin to create discussions-per-page.

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Logan Rosen wrote:

We're getting an error in the admin console for both of our servers running Discourse 0.9.8.4 (they're in a load balancer, connected to the same DB):

A check for updates has not been performed lately. Ensure sidekiq is running.

Sidekiq is definitely running on both - ps shows 0 of 25 busy for both servers. Any ideas?

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Katie Hunter wrote:

Hi! katie is here :0)

I've been following Discourse for few month since last year and shared few topics about it on Vbulletin, I liked what i saw so far. I am the owner of a popular anime community 'Nihonomaru' Well the site started back in 2007 with a Vbulletin base forum.

While I loved several of discourse features and see it has great potential, the only downside was that it is not PHP/MySQL base but Ruby/PGSQL and I am looking into integrating it for my homepage which is a php base based on a Zend framework. I am planning on using Discourse when it reaches a stable stage for a different company project which i can't reveal currently, however, I've always wondered, why never forum base software never attempt to make it more social like Twitter, G+, and FB?

For instance if i want all these nice social features, i had to code it on our site ex http://www.nihonomaru.com/profile/rina-touin.1/about and we have the "Discover" tab which shows feeds related to users' activities and what they share, you like them, and so on just like twitter.

I've never seen any forum software taking this approach, whether it is Vbulletin, Xenforo, IPB and so on and still their focus was community, conversation and sharing. Discourse has live feeds and is taking a different approach when it comes to conversation. Is there any plans currently or in the future to evolve Discourse profile system into using features similar to social sites? While i have features similar to it, i think as a forum base, it will be unique for everyone to try them, it helps shape the community you like to create based on the niche you like.

Not everyone spends 2+ years into coding features like twitter, FB and G+ on their own site while adding creativity to its features. It takes a lot of time and effort. I don't think VB, Xenforo or IPB are taking this approach but I think Discourse given that they have a unique live feeds and conversation, can be potentially successful in these social areas.

Have Discourse ever thought about this?
Is there a reason why Discourse went with Ruby/PGSQL instead of PHP/Mysql?

I couldn't find a suggestion forum to create my topic in. I thought the closes was the feature category. Please feel free to move this topic if it is in the wrong category (:

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Nicholas Smith wrote:

The "New" category tab isn't showing a count, but when I click on "New" I see there are topics listed. Is this a bug?

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Jae wrote:

As a community, what do we think about the idea of community editing.

Basically, other community members can edit posts (similar to what Stack Exchange does). I feel like one of the biggest things that hold traditional forums back is that they don't have this feature, which causes a lot of confusion when people start using bad grammar/punctuation and nobody knows what you're talking about.

The obvious arguments against this are:

• It would be relatively difficult to implement. I completely understand this, but I would also be 100% in on helping out with the implementation.
• Discourse doesn't have a reputation system, making it hard to decide who gets editing privileges. This could be ironed out by the community, but there are definitely other ways to decide who can edit.
• Discourse is meant to be a discussion board, not a reference. Yes, but as I said before, you can definitely benefit from editing posts in a discussion. I'm not talking about editing the essence of a post or adding more information to a post, just basic clean-up

Again, this is just a very spontaneous idea that I had, and I wanted to see what the community thought about it.

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Tom Spilman wrote:

The phrase "Category definition for XXXXX" looks and sounds clumsy to me. Just "category definition" itself seems like technical jargon at first.

I have been renaming mine to "About XXXXX" or "About the XXXXX category" which seems more user friendly to me.

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Tempest wrote:

When I visit https://meta.discourse.org/categories.json all of the permission values are set to null.

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Moe wrote:

Hello,

First and foremost, thanks to the developers of Discourse and everyone who is making great efforts in creating an awesome forum!

I am a Discouse newbie and I am trying to do sso using the CAS sso auth plugin in https://github.com/eriko/cas_sso .

I am currently making some experiments in authenticating users in Discourse using a test web app I am using as CAS server. I have set up discourse in a VM (vagrant) whereas the CAS server runs in the host machine. I have installed the sso plugin and set the values as indicated (i.e. cas_sso_host, cas_sso_port, etc, as it is a non-standard CAS server), with ssh disabled.

One thing that I noticed is that it seems that there seems to be a cross domain protection acting, the following is a message that appears in the console when I go to login in vagrant discourse:

Started GET "/session/csrf" for 10.0.2.2 at 2014-02-14 17:53:12 -0500
Processing by SessionController#csrf as */*
Completed 200 OK in 1ms (Views: 0.2ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)

Here 10.0.2.2 is the ip of the CAS server. This server is accessible from vagrant, I tested access to the CAS server URLs using lynx (everything works fine). I should likely mention also that cas_sso_login_url is set to /login and cas_sso_path is set to /cas in the Discourse sso plugin options. I have been also monitoring requests to /cas/login in the CAS server and none of my login attempts from Discourse have made it there.

I am brand new to Discourse and Ruby, so I am having a bit of a struggle here and any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much in advance for your time and excellent disposition.

Best regards,
Moe

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Patrick Klug wrote:

Example: If I want to link to example@codinghorror.com it should display this as a URL and not as a username.

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Patrick Klug wrote:

I can't figure out where to put discourse into a read only mode for maintenance. Apparently there are bugs for this feature so it must exist.

Where is it?

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greggman wrote:

Sorry not sure what topic this belongs under. but....

Have you considered a free hosted option? I know they are not quite the same thing but I've been using disqus.com for comments on my blog. It's awesome, they host it. That means they deal with spam issues, they deal with upgrades to the system. Of course there are tradeoffs

They have 1 login for all sites: Good: less hassle to use, track all threads from one place, reputation carries (not a spammer on one site assumes not a spammer on others) Bad: less granularity

They probably plan to mine for data: Good: can tell trends, etc. Bad: privacy

Sure I could host my own discourse installation but what I've found running a blog for 12 years now is it's no fun to do it myself. Sooner or later the spammers find a way in and I have hours of cleanup to do. Even if they never find a way in I have hours of maintenance. Disqus is mostly install and forget. Even cooler for wordpress it's pretty much risk free because it manages to insert the comments back into the wordpress database so if I ever quit disqus I don't lose my comments.

$49 a month is way too much for discourse for a personal blog that might only see 25-250 forum messages a year. Seeing as how facebook comments are free and disqus comments are free it seems like you might want to consider this as an option. Maybe the free option you reserve the right to insert some ads or something.

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Clifford Duke wrote:

I'm kind of curious, what purpose does the honey pot serve when it comes to protecting user creation?

Currently to create a user you need the data from https://meta.discourse.org/users/hp.json to create a user. Since it seems like the data does not change, how does this add security? My only guess is it adds security through obscurity.

I'm still relatively new to web security and this is an interesting topic to me.

Thanks

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Dr Emixam wrote:

Hi everyone,

I've been using discourse in french for a few weeks now and I've notices many missing translations in the different interfaces.

This wouldn't be a big problem if the missing translations were displaying something more user-friendly than things like "[fr.topic.flag_topic.title]" or "[fr.user.unread_message_count]".

So, I'm wondering, does discourse updates allow me to get latest versions of the french translation ? Is that the normal behavior or did I do some mistakes in my config ?

Thank you for your help and answers.

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