How to host a Discourse forum on your own server

Daniel · November 20, 2016, 7:31pm

Discourse is a fairly new forum software that is very comfortable to use. As a server administrator, you can either run it from a Docker container, or pay a fee to use a hosted version. However, if neither Docker nor subscription fees are feasible options, setting up a Discourse instance without Docker involves a bit of work.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.xltoolbox.net/blog/2016/10/how-to-host-a-discourse-forum-on-your-own-server.html

arsewi · December 17, 2016, 10:20pm

Hi @Daniel

I have been using your tutorial above to set up my discourse. However, I am setting up using vagrant and virtual box just to run locally for development.

My question is, how do I log in to the forum?
I’ve set up the development email address using .conf file. Then I managed to put my name and password. Then it said email has been sent to my email address for activation. As I am running this locally, surely I won’t receive any email. Then how do I log in to the forum?

Sorry if this is really basic.

Thanks!!

Daniel · December 18, 2016, 5:00am

I once had the same problem…

You need to activate the first user from the Rails console as described here:

https://www.xltoolbox.net/blog/2016/10/how-to-host-a-discourse-forum-on-your-own-server.html#prepare-the-first-user

See:

github.com

discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPER-ADVANCED.md

# Discourse Advanced Developer Install Guide

This guide is aimed at advanced Rails developers who have installed their own Rails apps before.

Note: If you are developing on a Mac, you will probably want to look at [these instructions](DEVELOPMENT-OSX-NATIVE.md) as well.

# Preparing a fresh Ubuntu install

To get your Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04 LTS install up and running to develop Discourse and Discourse plugins follow the commands below. We assume an English install of Ubuntu.

    # Basics
    whoami > /tmp/username
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/redis-server
    sudo apt-get -yqq update
    sudo apt-get -yqq install software-properties-common vim curl expect debconf-utils git-core build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev openssl libcurl4-openssl-dev libreadline6-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev imagemagick redis-server advancecomp gifsicle jhead jpegoptim libjpeg-turbo-progs optipng pngcrush pngquant gnupg2

    # Ruby
    curl -sSL https://rvm.io/mpapis.asc | gpg2 --import -
    curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
    echo 'gem: --no-document' >> ~/.gemrc

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An alternative way is to use a rake task:

Hope this helps!

arsewi · December 18, 2016, 1:45pm

Hi @Daniel

Thanks…! It works fine now. I didn’t know that it can be set up using the console :D.
Thanks for your help!