A "safe mode" to easily disable all third party plugins

One common problem with Discourse installs:

  • you update to the latest version

  • due to internal Discourse changes, one of your plugins breaks

  • the plugin doesn’t just break, it breaks your entire site which now has JS errors or maybe even a white screen

  • you open a meta support topic about how updating Discourse broke your whole site :sadpanda:

  • we ask “hmm, did you try disabling all third party plugins”

We need a much easier way for people to enter ‘safe mode’ where only official Discourse plugins that are bundled with Discourse during a clean install are loaded.

I am open to whatever implementation makes sense, but switching to “safe mode” needs to be much easier to stem the flood of support topics on Discourse updates breaking third party plugins.

(This is on the official 1.7 release list as well.)

14 Likes