In a discussion titled “Discourse Connect/Squarespace (SSO)” under the SSO category and tagged with discourseconnect, jholmertz seeks help integrating Discourse with Squarespace using Discourse Connect/SSO for a nonprofit’s website. Though documentation suggests it may be possible, jholmertz is unfamiliar with Discourse and asks if anyone would be willing to take on the project.
jholmertz notes they are committed to Squarespace and cannot switch platforms. simon responds that Squarespace doesn’t natively support OAuth2, OpenID Connect, or DiscourseConnect. However, he suggests it might be technically feasible to build a custom Squarespace Extension that handles Discourse SSO — though it would require external server-side code and likely be a paid solution. He notes uncertainty about technical feasibility and market demand, but plans to investigate further and update the thread.
simon also recommends the Discourse WordPress plugin as a simpler, proven alternative if switching platforms were an option — a suggestion jholmertz appreciates but cannot use for this project. Later, EH24 asks for updates on the integration, indicating ongoing interest in this use case. No working integration exists yet, and development would require custom engineering effort.
Hello, I’m supporting a nonprofit in setting up a new website on Squarespace. They are already set up on Discourse. We are planning to link from Squarespace to their Discourse instance. Since we are using the Squarespace membership functionality we are looking at the Discourse Connect/SSO.
However, I am totally unfamiliar with Discourse. It seems possible from my reading of the documentation, but is this actually possible?
If you have experience with this and would (seriously) be interested in taking on the small(?) project of setting up Discourse Connect with Squarespace, please also let me know.
I’m interested in the general problem you’re trying to solve, but can’t promise too much yet.
There are two common approaches for logging into Discourse from another application. The first is to use the other application as either an OAuth2 or OpenID Connect identity provider. The second is to use Discourse’s implementation of SSO (DiscourseConnect.)
As far as I can tell, Squarespace sites cannot be used as OAuth2 or OpenID Connect identity providers. That rules out the first approach. If I am wrong about this, hopefully someone will let me know.
Squarespace also doesn’t currently support DiscourseConnect, but it might be possible to develop a Squarespace Extension that supported DiscourseConnect and possibly other Squarespace/Discourse integrations. Developing this would be somewhat complex, as the code that handled Discourse logins would have to exist on its own server. I think it would have to be a paid extension.
I’m not certain that this will be technically possible, or if there would be enough demand for it to justify the development time. I’m curious enough to look into it some more though. I’ll update this topic with what I find sometime next week.
One thing to note is that if you’re not yet committed to Squarespace, the Discourse WordPress plugin supports DiscourseConnect. It is very straightforward to configure.