Table of Contents

  1. Documentation
    1. Hosting
    2. Installation
    3. Plugins
    4. Emails
    5. Backups
    6. SSH
    7. SSL
  2. Project Channel on Discourse

We are running our own instance of discourse.
Available at https://discourse.theembassy.be

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1) Documentation

1.1) Hosting

It is a VM hosted on a dedicated server from OVH SoYouStart, following users have access to the server:

1.2) Installation

Discourse uses a docker based installer. It appends the plugins to the docker image, sets up an SSL cert, minimizes all js and css, and then spins up the container

1.3) Plugins

Following plugins are installed:

  • discourse-details
  • discourse-narrative-bot
  • discourse-nginx-performance-report
  • discourse-question-answer
  • docker_manager
  • lazyYT
  • poll

1.4) Emails

The Discourse docker does not provide support for outgoing email. I tried to set it up using Postfix on the Docker Host but without success. In the end, I registered a Sparkpost account to handle outgoing emails. We're on the free plan with 750 emails per day and 15k emails per month. It is registered on my (wouter) personal email though.

1.5) Backups

Currently we don't have an automated backup system.
Backups are done manually from within discourse (files & db)

1.6) SSH

ssh ubuntu@discourse.theembassy.be

1.7) SSL

The site is accessible over SSL. The SSL Cert is automatically generated by the installation script of Discourse. I'm unsure whether it also does auto updating.

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2) Project Channel on Discourse

https://discourse.theembassy.be/c/projects-embassy/discourse

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