What is the “best” way to put a forum on “static” mode, no new register, no new post, no login, people can just view the the content only? sure as admin we can stop allow new register users. but more like looking a way to generate static pages, have tried This post " wget --wait=1 --recursive --page-requisites --user-agent "Googlebot" https:/site.com " on the vps where discourse is hosted, then view the the folder on the local computer, css seem not working. Any better solution. Thank you in advance.

hi @jsmith1 welcome to Meta :wave: i think perhaps you want read only mode: admin - backups - “enable read-only” button

when we enable read-only, seem like we still need the docker running. Any more complicated solution if we just would like all the pages work as HTML page? Also found this by Jeff Atwood. Is this the way to get a working static pages/site like read-only mode ? Thank you for the quick response.

This is a feature that I still view as quite important – the ability to switch a Discourse site entirely to static HTML “archived” mode for permanent storage long term, say, in the Internet Archive. We have something close to this with the web crawler view, so it’s not entirely far off..

can you please, please answer with a “yes” or a “no” ? (my intention is not to fore for an answer, but since reading the post many time, still can’t fully understand it as a yes, we can fully do that)

Couldn’t you just set all the categories to ‘everybody’ can ‘see’ only? That puts the forum into read-only mode. It would still allow logins, though you could disable new registrations. You could try disabling local logins but that might disable your access as well as everybody else’s. If the ability for someone to log in and do messages and chats is something you want to avoid, you could also try inactivating everybody’s account, bur allow anonymous access. (It seems like we’re about 90% of the way to a ‘static mode’ with what’s already available.)

What is the "best" way to put a forum on "static" mode?

Product Support

Stephen (Stephen) June 13, 2023, 8:21pm 6

It’s not possible with Discourse at the moment, no.

Topic		Replies	Views
Converting discourse topics to read only pages Product Support	1	1306	September 8, 2017
Recommended way to close and archive a Discourse forum itself? Product Support	4	4239	May 13, 2017
Read-only static HTML copy to retire Discourse instance Product Support	1	935	December 1, 2021
Archiving an inactive discourse forum Product Support	4	1315	May 31, 2016
Archiving Discourse into a Website Self-hosting	2	170	February 22, 2026

What is the "best" way to put a forum on "static" mode?

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