Contabo vs. Hetzner vs. Linode vs. Digital Ocean for Discourse Hosting Under $30/mo

[JammyDodger]

There’s the dev:populate rake task that may be of some use:

@nathank

If what you want is a test server to see what Discourse is like, though, you might want to check things out with some fake data, and if you do, you can do this:

./launcher enter app
ALLOW_DEV_POPULATE=1 bundle install
ALLOW_DEV_POPULATE=1 rake dev:populate

This will seed your forum with some fake data so that you can see what things look like with whatever themes and plugins you want. If you haven’t started your forum yet, this will give you some idea what things are likely to look like.