Hey @gilgongo , have you looked at Documentation - Discourse Meta ?
To a certain extent the documentation available represents the limited scope of the free support we can provide here.
A fresh VPS at DigitalOcean is a know quantity. This approach allows us to provide steps which are easy to follow, and all but guarantee a working install at the end.
We can’t really account for all of the other configurations of shared server, on-premise deployment and hobbyist install.
If you want to learn how to install Discourse the good news is that the costs of a droplet at DigitalOcean are prorated. A $6 VPS will only cost you $0.20 a day to keep around as a known-good reference while you attempt to install Discourse into a more nuanced environment.