Beginner questions before buying

Support
1

Hello, I am looking for a forum/community software.
I have looked at a few things. Among others Mighty Networks, Circle.so, Woltlab, xenForo etc.

Now I have landed here and have some unanswered questions. I hope to find answers here.

  1. I have a managed server at Hetzner. I asked there if I can install Discourse. I was told the following: “According to the Official Documentation, installation is only possible via Docker. However, Docker is not supported on our managed servers. In this case you could try the installation via UDocker, but here we can’t guarantee that everything will work as desired.
    GitHub - indigo-dc/udocker: A basic user tool to execute simple docker containers in batch or interactive systems without root privileges.”

Does anyone know if this will work?

2.) Is it possible to set Discourse completely to German? I’m planning a community with a fairly young target audience who don’t know much English.

3.) Is there some kind of showroom so I can see what is possible?

4.) For the connoisseurs among you: Is it easy to create a forum like this: forum.glamour.de
My knowledge is limited to HTML and CSS at a very high level.

Thanks a lot

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Yes, in the admin settings you can change the locale of the UI, and 99% of our text has German counterparts (you can see language coverage on Crowdin Enterprise)

There are a variety of examples on our website, Discourse customers | Discourse - Civilized Discussion

This can vary by feature, their carousel is custom, but much of the other changes were accomplished using CSS alone. We also have a variety of customizations in the theme-component category here on Meta that can make things like banners, additional nav links, and featured posts easier to implement.

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Hi @wizible :wave: welcome to Discourse Meta :slight_smile:

Regarding Hetzner, I believe there are folks here who are using Hetzner for Discourse - I think @Canapin has at least one forum instance on Hetzner. Also, I think @denvergeeks does as well. Also perhaps some relevant info in this topic:

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I run Discourse on Hetzner, but on a self-managed server. I’ve never tried their managed server offering but it does look somewhat limited, e.g. no root access.

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Yes exactly, you don’t have root access with the managed servers. Support told me that it might work with the udocker tool. Unfortunately they could not tell me.

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I would not try to make that work. I can imagine a way to do it, but all are very complicated and it will be hard to get help.

You’ll want to get a full vm with root access.

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You could use a Hetzner Cloud server. They say there’s a build that includes docker so that’s a good start. I’ve never used one of their cloud server builds that includes ‘apps’ though so I don’t know how that works. Provisioning a new cloud server only takes a minute or two once you’ve created your cloud manager account and they are pretty cheap.

Cloud servers aren’t managed though. I’m not sure you’ll find a managed server where you can have root access.

Note: I’m not Hetzner sales! Just a happy customer for many years.

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Is there strong reasons for that?

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The Discourse self-installation procedure is the easiest in the business of web apps and idiot proof.

Get yourself a 5€/month VPS server, install and play around with it for a few weeks. You’ll learn the basics, see what Discourse can or cannot do, and the whole excercise costs you a few cents.

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I maintain some clients’ websites and found this to be the most practical. Do you see it differently?

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Yes. AFAIK there is no access to shell, no ability to use docker etc. so you have or will have some difficulties to offer what your customers need or want.

Well, I can be very wrong too.

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Yes, you are right. I have heard these arguments before. However, I have actually never needed such a thing. Now when I installed discourse I encountered obstacles for the first time.

What would you recommend?