Automated "Personal Archive" Sync: Mirroring my topics from other Discourse sites?

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tom_eric proposes a feature or plugin to create a “Discourse-to-Discourse” bridge, enabling users to automatically mirror their topics and the surrounding conversation context from remote Discourse sites to their own self-hosted instances. Currently, the manual process of copying posts is tedious and fails to preserve the valuable replies that provide context. The proposed solution would monitor a user’s profile on external sites and sync new topics, including full Markdown content and images. To address ethical concerns regarding scraping and impersonation, tom_eric suggests importing replies as quoted text blocks or attributing them to a generic “External User” account with clear footers indicating the original source. zogstrip notes that while not a current solution, this is a valid use case that id. discourse.com could potentially support. tom_eric reiterates that the ultimate goal is to connect all Discourse sites, enhancing content ownership and decentralization.

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Hello Discourse team and community,

I am a long-time user and host of my own Discourse instance. I also actively contribute to several other Discourse-based communities.

The Challenge:
I often create high-effort posts on other forums. To preserve my digital footprint and maintain a personal knowledge base, I want to archive these discussions onto my own self-hosted Discourse instance.

Currently, I have to manually copy-paste everything, which is tedious. More importantly, a lot of value lies in the conversation context (replies from others), not just my original post. Without the replies, the archive feels incomplete.

The Feature Request:
I am looking for a solution (or a plugin idea) that can act as a “Discourse-to-Discourse” bridge.
Specifically:

  1. Monitor: Watch my user profile on a remote Discourse site.
  2. Sync: When I create a new topic there, automatically pull the full content (Markdown + Images) to my local instance.
  3. Context Preservation: Ideally, it should also import the replies to keep the discussion readable.

Regarding Data & Ethics:
I understand that importing other users’ replies might raise concerns about “scraping” or impersonation. To address this, the tool could:
Import replies as “Quoted Text” blocks instead of creating fake user accounts.
Or, attribute them to a generic “External User” system account with a clear footer: “Originally posted by [Username] on [Source Site]”.

This would be a game-changer for content ownership and decentralization, allowing us to participate in communities while keeping a permanent copy of our contributions at home.

Has anyone implemented something similar, or could this be achieved via existing webhooks/API scripts?

3 Likes
Multi-instance activity backup + unified multi-site Discourse reader
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Not a solution but this is a use case that id.discourse.com could provide and/or help with.

1 Like
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Thank you. My ultimate goal is to connect all Discourse sites.