Using a private Discourse as our own notebook

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AI-generated summary

Users discuss using private Discourse instances as personal notebooks or knowledge bases. Canapin started by migrating notes from Discord to a private Discourse hosted on Oracle’s free tier, using it for everything from technical notes to personal lists and manuals, enhanced with the PDF preview plugin. rorycb uses theirs for home projects and volunteer work, leveraging plugins like calendar, checklist, and solved, and even introduced Discourse to colleagues. Jagster uses a private category for drafts and timed publishing, planning to host a new instance on DigitalOcean for notes. pacharanero has used Discourse for years as a note-taking tool and shared a blog detailing its advantages and configuration tips. sniper756, who migrated from XenForo and vBulletin, uses Discourse on an Ion VPS with default settings, avoiding plugins for easier maintenance. Canapin later revisited the topic, noting their Discourse now includes placeholder-forms and is used daily for countless practical purposes — showing how Discourse evolves from community tool to indispensable personal system.

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I’m wondering if other people use their own, private Discourse as a personal notebook.

I’ve always had trouble organizing myself, writing down useful stuff, keeping track of interesting stuff I come across, etc.

I first created my own Discord server to do this:

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I did the same with a friend to allow both of us to note in a single space any useful stuff related to Discourse, hosting, servers, coding, etc.

After a while, I decided to migrate all this data to a common, private Discourse instance. Plus, it’s safer because I’m in control of all the data.

My friend doesn’t really use it anymore though he still has access (I sometimes copy links to his intent), so I extended it and now use it, along with the Discourse/servers/coding stuff, to write more personal stuff in it, like songs that I appreciated, movies and books I want to watch/read, the manual of my freezer :smile: and various other stuff.

I’ve started to move the data from my personal Discord server to this Discourse instance, and I’ll continue to do so.

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I use Discourse pretty much out of the shelf, and only added the PDF preview component.

I host my forum on the free offer from Oracle.

So, I wonder how many people are using their own private Discourse to do such things, and what component/plugins they use?
Also, where is your Discourse hosted?

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I also have a Discourse instance for personal use. I use to to track projects I’m working on around the house. I’ve also started using it for some work I am doing with a volunteer org. It’s handy because I can add people to groups that only allows them see the categories specific to that work.

Heck I also used this instance to introduce Discourse to my work colleagues when we were looking to setup community forums :smiley:

I use the calendar, checklist, and solved plugins for mine, nothing too fancy.

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I have one private category for myself. In the beginning I used it for drafts and later for timed publishing. But lately It has been more or less notebook too.

I have a VPS from DigitalOcean as VPN server and I shall start a private Discourse there, just for notes, writings etc.

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Clip To Discourse Chrome Extension - now with User API capability!
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Hi all, I just found this thread although I’ve been using a Discourse as a personal notekeeping app for a few years now. I wrote a blog about the features of Discourse that make notetaking a pleasure on Discourse, some configuration tips, and some TCs/Plugins which can help.

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What a coincidence, I also use it for a personal database, and have for many years. However, I used XenForo before and just switched to Discourse, which is very good.

I use an Ion VPS.

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That’s funny, I completely forgot I wrote this topic when I wrote this one: Do you use Discourse as a non-community tool?

It covers basically the same things, but three years later.

I’ve added a few features, and it’s an incredible tool I use literally every day. I put so many useful things on it.

I also make use of placeholder-forms as described here: Placeholder forms is such a great component