I'm writing a short documentation for admins of Discourse forums I've helped set up. Do I miss something in it?

General
13

Oh well, here’s the full automatically translated guide then:

Making sure you’re prepared for any eventuality

It is strongly recommended, in addition to local backups (stored on the same server as the forum), to have a copy of those backups on another server or in the cloud[1].

It is also useful to keep a copy of the file /var/discourse/containers/app.yml in a secure location[2]. This optional file is useful in case of a forum reinstallation or migration to another server.

If you have any serious doubts about anything, contact me.

Updates

:information_source: Before doing an update, it is strongly recommended to download the latest backup of your forum.

Via the interface

Do updates when there is an unhappy red smiley in the admin (it means there is an important update to do).
Updates are done via https://tonforum.fr/admin/upgrade

They sometimes happen in two steps: you first need to update “Docker_Manager” before being able to upgrade the rest:

image
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Via the command line

Sometimes an update has to be done via the command line (the Discourse admin page will say so if it’s necessary).

  1. Connect to the server via SSH
  2. Rebuild the forum (a rebuild always updates Discourse) using the following command:
  3. /var/discourse/launcher rebuild app
  4. From time to time, after making sure the forum works correctly, it can be useful to remove unused Docker images (leftovers from previous upgrades) to free up disk space:
    /var/discourse/launcher cleanup

What to do if the forum no longer works?

Rebuilding the forum fixes many problems and is done with the same command as an update via the command line:

/var/discourse/launcher rebuild app

What if the forum still doesn’t work after a rebuild?

Ask me or post on the official support forum.

Location of important files on the server

app.yml

It contains the server configuration and the list of installed plugins. Very useful if the forum needs to be moved to another server, or for certain configurations (moving uploads and backups to another disk, for example). It is located here:

/var/discourse/containers/app.yml

mail-receiver.yml

It contains the configuration of the software that allows replies by email to be received and published on the forum. It is located here:

/var/discourse/containers/mail-receiver.yml

Backups

Backup files are located here:

/var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default

Important pages in the forum admin:

Pages that can be useful :technologist:

Themes and components

They contain, among other things, custom CSS and HTML:

https://tonforum.fr/admin/config/customize/themes

Logs

Email

Useful for debugging:

https://tonforum.fr/admin/email-logs

Staff actions

Very useful. It keeps a record of (almost) all site setting changes and other moderator and admin actions.

https://tonforum.fr/admin/logs/staff_action_logs

Error logs

Can give clues when there is a problem whose cause isn’t obvious.

https://tonforum.fr/logs/

Backups

To change backup frequency and maximum number, view them, or download them:

https://tonforum.fr/admin/backups

Resources

https://meta.discourse.org : official support, don’t hesitate to post there, members and devs are happy to help
https://ask.discourse.com : a chatbot trained on Discourse support and data, surprisingly effective at answering questions (yes, really)

  1. If I installed your forum, your backups are automatically copied to my Google Drive, but ideally in the future they should be saved to a space you are responsible for. We’ll talk about it someday :smile: ↩︎

  2. It contains the identifier and password for the mail server, as well as the administrator email (mine, actually). ↩︎

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