What will happen with my community web address if I upgrade, e.g. from Starter to Pro?
AI-generated summary
The discussion revolves around what happens to a community’s web address when upgrading from a Starter to a Pro plan on Discourse. Stela_Manova initially inquires about the fate of their web address upon upgrading. ondrej clarifies that changing the hosting tier does not affect the chosen domain, and provides guidance on setting up a custom domain post-upgrade. awesomerobot adds that upgrading unlocks the option for a custom domain but does not require it. Stela_Manova seeks clarification on what constitutes a ‘custom domain’ and the logic behind terms like ‘community’, ‘forum’, and ‘discussion’ in web addresses. awesomerobot explains the difference between subdomains on the Starter plan and fully custom domains on higher plans, and provides a link to the relevant documentation. Stela_Manova provides examples of web addresses using different terms, and awesomerobot confirms that these terms are chosen by individual sites with no specific logic. The issue is marked as solved by Stela_Manova.
Hi Stela 
,
Since you are just changing your hosting tier it doesn’t affect the domain you chose. You can also email team@discourse.org if you need help!
Thanks for answering. Butt with the Starter plan you cannot have a custom domain?
That’s correct, you cannot have a custom domain with the starter plan. However, once you change tier, in the admin dashboard you will be able to change your domain.
You’ll have to get a domain (if you haven’t already) and change the DNS to point it to your Discourse community. Then using the documentation topic listed below you can set up your domain on your upgraded hosting plan.
To be extra clear, you can continue to use your current example.discourse.group domain when you upgrade, you aren’t required to use a custom domain — upgrading just unlocks it as an option.
Thank you for your reply! What is understood under “custom domain”? On Discourse pages, there are addresses with “community”, “forum/s”, and “discussion/s”, but I could not find one that is just “name.com”, i.e., really custom. Btw, is there any logic (rule) behind the words “community”, “forum/s”, and “discussion/s”?
Thank you, but the problem is not a matter of a domain configuration.
When we’re talking about the domains or custom domains, we’re specifically talking about the domain and TLD part of a web address as shown here:
On the Starter plan, you get to choose the subdomain, which is used as part of the discourse.group domain. So your-custom-name.discourse.group ends up being your Discourse site’s web address.
When you upgrade to higher plans like Pro, you can optionally customize both the subdomain and the second-level domain by using a domain you’ve leased from a registrar like namecheap.com or porkbun.com.
That’s when you’d need to follow instructions in Configure your domain name for hosted Discourse to get a fully custom web address like forum.example.com or myawesomeforum.com instead of example.discourse.group
The path section of the address generally can not be changed.
Can you be more specific about where you see these? are you looking to change the text on your site in specific places? (screenshots may help)
I mean web addresses such as these:
Thanks for clarifying! that’s part of setting up a custom domain. Each individual site has chosen which subdomain they wanted forum/community/discussions, etc… there’s no specific logic to it, and they could all use whatever they’d like there.
Thank you for your help with this. We can mark the issue as solved.