I can’t seem to get the secondsite method working again, so now I’m looking at running my two sites in separate containers on the same server. If anyone has any experience with this, drop me a message.

It is mostly doable on a decently sized machine, You’ll need a reverse proxy at the bare minimum to handle ssl. And maybe use the socketed template instead of exposing ports.

[image] itsbhanusharma: And maybe use the socketed template instead of exposing ports. would a docker network be appropriate?

I’ve done it with treafik and nginx proxy something. It does use more resources than multisite. You still have to understand how to get postgres to have multiple databases (unless you want to run two copies of postgres, which will require still more resources).

This server has 12 processors and 16 Gig and these are not high volume forums, so I’m not worried about the extra resources to have two containers both running postgres. I just need to figure out how to get two containers running at the same time, if I rebuild one, it stops the other. I can handle…

[image] MikeNolan: I just need to figure out how to get two containers running at the same time, if I rebuild one, it stops the other. You need to make another yml file, like app2.yml and change all the stuff that conflicts with the other one.

Hi Jay, When you say [image] pfaffman: change all the stuff that conflicts with the other one. do you mean I should be treating the two containers as a single site behind a sensible hostname and failover setup (i.e. same DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME with a load balancer/health checks in front), rathe…

[image] MikeNolan: I just need to figure out how to get two containers running at the same time, if I rebuild one, it stops the other. Wait. Did you clone Discourse twice? You want clone Discourse once and then have multiple yml files in the containers directory. Maybe look at Use Nginx Prox…

[image] pfaffman: [image] Ethsim2: I’m assuming both configs can just join the same Docker network rather than binding host ports, which would avoid some of the obvious conflicts — is that the right approach? I have the reverse proxy talk to port 80 on the container. Others prefer to use …

[image] pfaffman: You can even use discourse-setup if you rename app.yml to, say, hostname.yml before you run ./discourse-setup again. this sounds good, and probably explains why .\discourse-setup wasn’t working with an app.yml rather than the yml file being named the intended hostname?

Anyone have experience running two separate Docker containers instead of the secondsite method?

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itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma) November 17, 2025, 10:30am 4

If you know what you are doing then yes. There shouldn’t be any problem.

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Anyone have experience running two separate Docker containers instead of the secondsite method?

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