A few months ago I installed Discourse, added some topics as Index Topic in the Documentation Mode section. Everything worked as expected. backed up everything, deleted the Digital Ocean account, etc. A few days ago I installed Discourse again and restored everything from the backup file I created…

Just checking - have you seen this? [image] Discourse Doc Categories Updates for self-hosters For self-hosters using this plugin, our most recent update would require a manual rebuild of the index. This would involve running this rake task: bundle exec rake doc_categories:build_sidebar # if ru…

Thank you for the link. Since I’m still building the whole structure, I ended up just creating a new topic, copying and pasting the content from the old one, and delete the old topic. I only had 2 of those anyway. So, my question is: is that rake task something I need to do every time I update Dis…

No, that rake task is just a one-time thing from the date of that quoted post. You shouldn’t need to re-create the topic though, just going to category settings, unlinking, saving, and relinking the existing topic at least should work.

[image] nat: that rake task is just a one-time thing from the date of that quoted post Just wondering - why wasn’t this implemented as a migration?

From what I recalled at that time — It couldn’t be a migration. Migrations ideally don’t touch application code (because code can drift from when the migration is intended and error out). The PR also indicates the reason: This PR also includes a rake task (doc_categories.rake ) for rebuilding sid…

So, if I understand it correctly, from now on, I don’t need to do any of that? The rake task or the relinking process, whenever I update Discourse? Just want to make sure I understand it.

Yup. It was only a one-time thing.

Awesome! Thank you for clarifying! :raising_hands:

[image] nat: You shouldn’t need to re-create the topic though, just going to category settings, unlinking, saving, and relinking the existing topic at least should work. I’m finding that I need to do this every time I edit the index topic, which is a right pain. Am I missing something?

Hey fellow Nat, I’m acknowledging this issue here. I think there is a real problem but will need to reliably repro this. Will get back here sometime next week with good news hopefully.

Documentation Plugin - Index Topic not working after Restore

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nat (Natalie T) April 15, 2026, 11:04am 14

@nathank quick question, do you have discourse-calendar enabled?

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Documentation Plugin - Index Topic not working after Restore

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