Meta got a nostalgia-meets-migration roll call: LotusJeff asked how long communities have been running and what platforms they migrated from in How Old is Your Forum?, sparking stories of decades-old forums and long migration journeys (read more).
The official signatures plugin picked up several long-requested admin controls (group restrictions, category display, “first post only”, stricter URL validation, etc.) after jamie.wilson merged a PR into Discourse Signatures (read more).
Admin workflows around banners changed: staff can no longer make global banner topics from read-restricted categories, and dax suggested an interim “unlisted topic + Automation script” workflow in Can no longer create global banners from restricted categories. isaac emphasized the underlying issue is inadvertent exposure of restricted content via banners (read more).
Localization limitations for custom objects came up again: nat corrected earlier guidance and shared the console-based approach for translating custom badge strings in How can badges and groups be localized (multilingual)? (and why /admin/customize/site_texts won’t find keys that don’t exist yet).
“Phantom notification” behavior popped up: ice.d reported a notification badge that wouldn’t clear in Discourse states i have a notification, and chapoi explained why these async edge cases can be “impossible-to-solve-properly” in the general case (read more).
The “Clip To Discourse” extension shipped text selection clipping (plus context-menu support and template customization) in ‘Clip To Discourse’ Chrome Extension, with plans to adopt the Discourse User API authorization flow (read more).
dax explained the reasoning behind restricting banners sourced from private categories and proposed an interim workflow using an unlisted topic plus Automation scripting in Can no longer create global banners from restricted categories, then reiterated why Automation is needed when pin controls vanish on unlisted topics (read more).
Yesterday’s energy had everything: communities reminiscing about 20+ year timelines while the rest of us debated banners, browsers, and bugs—classic Meta, vintage edition.
Reported a regression in showing username + real name after upgrading in Support
Other threads that also saw fresh movement: chat settings disappearing after disabling chat (Bug), the tablet floating-search oddities (reversed typing in Bug and the uncloseable popover in Bug), and a Bilibili inline player theme component announcement in Theme component.
Interesting Topics
#Announcements
Falco announced major capacity increases for Discourse’s hosted LLM service (bigger plan limits, updated open-weights model, higher max tokens, faster generation), with the new caps already live and reflected on customer dashboards (details).
#Community Building
A long-running-community “roll call” turned into a mini playbook: LotusJeff shared how a niche forum avoids “social media leaks” via deep archival know-how and a strong core, while Canapin reflected on migrations from newsgroups/phpBB and the “multiple migration phenomenon” (discussion, plus context on migrations here and the referenced older thread read more).
A new guide walks through installing Discourse MCP into OpenCode CLI—framing the three-piece architecture (remote forum, local MCP server, and the client) and encouraging people to let an LLM help with the steps (guide); it also cross-links to a companion setup for another client (Codex CLI).
A “why are we being logged out / IP blocked?” incident got a classic diagnosis: with Cloudflare in front, everyone can appear to come from the same IP, so banning one bad actor can effectively ban everyone—plus a reminder to use the Cloudflare template in app.yml (problem report, Falco’s explanation read more).
A hands-on recovery recipe landed for admins who migrated uploads (S3 → local filesystem) and ended up with transparent.png due to missing DB records: satonotdead documented an approach to recreate uploads rows from on-disk files and then rebake posts (walkthrough).
A staging upgrade to 2026.3.0-latest surfaced a display-name mismatch: “username + real name” wasn’t appearing as expected, and pfaffman pointed out the “same value” suppression behavior (and that there’s a setting to force both) (report, reply read more).
A subtle permissions/visibility question explored how about page hidden groups interacts with about page extra groups, especially whether “hidden” should be absolute or conditionally visible to privileged viewers (e.g., admins) (question).
A known email regression reappeared “in the wild”: supermathie tied it to a merged gem update (with a specific breaking commit and a later fix) to help anyone who hit outbound mail failures after updating (post-mortem + pointers).
#Feature
A UX improvement request argued that admins on a multisite guest who hit /sidekiq should get an explanatory hint rather than a confusing error—continuing a thread from an earlier discussion and leaning on the “law of least surprise” principle (feature request, prior context link read more).
Private calendar ergonomics improved: Falco noted authenticated ICS access work already in progress, then followed up with efforts to make user API key generation friendlier for non-technical users—bringing Discourse closer to “private RSS feed”-style usability for calendars (update).
Two tightly-related tablet/search issues were reported on try.discourse.org: one where characters appear reversed in the floating search widget in landscape mode (bug report) and another where the floating search popover persists and can’t be closed after rotating back to portrait (bug report). Both were reproducible even in Safe Mode (Safe Mode reference), and Canapin proposed an interim workaround: only search for palindromes (quip).
A report in Chinese flagged that enabling AI translation can also translate tags into the user’s language and then make the localized tag content uneditable; nat suggested enabling the “Experimental tag settings page” to edit those localizations (report, solution path read more).
Disabling Chat appears to remove Chat preferences permanently (redirecting /preferences/chat back to /latest), and a responder confirmed reproducibility—referencing an older “once chat is disabled…” regression report (new report, reproduction note read more, earlier related topic read more).
#Theme component
A new Bilibili inline player theme component was shared as a “no rebuild” alternative to a server-side plugin approach, with a setup guide via the Themes UI and notes on fallback behavior for edge cases (announcement, comparison plugin link read more).
Falco delivered a substantial upgrade announcement for hosted ai LLM capacity/limits and model performance, including a clear plan-by-plan table of the new caps (post).
He also quickly identified a likely Cloudflare/IP-ban cause behind widespread forced logouts and suggested checking the Cloudflare template in app.yml (support reply).
On the calendar front, he shared progress on authenticated ICS feeds and improving User API Key ergonomics to make “private calendar feeds” feel as seamless as private RSS (feature update).
He additionally asked for clarification to narrow down an AI tool timeout question (support follow-up).
supermathie traced an outbound-email regression to a gem update (and pointed to the fixing commit), effectively serving as a same-day heads-up for anyone upgrading and suddenly losing mail delivery (support update).
He also proposed a UX improvement: when a multisite guest admin hits /sidekiq, Discourse should explain why it’s unavailable instead of simply erroring, referencing earlier discussion context (feature request, earlier thread link read more).
nat responded to a bug report about AI translation affecting tag localizations, pointing admins to enable the experimental tag settings page so localized tag strings can be edited (reply).
If today’s floating search box starts typing gniht instead of thing, it might be time to lean into yesterday’s wisdom and search for palindromes until the bug is squashed.
Timelord asked how to merge/import content from another Discourse site without a full restore, and itsbhanusharma pointed to the long-running “move topics between instances” guidance as a practical path forward (read more, plus the referenced how-to: read more).
A regression (or at least a surprising behavior change) popped up around attachment click counters—uploaded files using the |attachment syntax weren’t showing counters, and now counters appear missing even when that part is removed (read more, follow-up discussion: read more).
“How do I show images on the article front page?” got a very “use the right building block” answer: chapoi suggested the Topic List Thumbnails theme component as the likely solution (read more, component: read more).
A tricky auth/config edge case continued: disabling local logins could prevent new-user signup and surface console/log errors (including missing MaxMindDB files and OAuth access_denied)—with reproduction notes on a fresh install (read more).
“Problems setting up Sentiment” resurfaced with questions about backfilling older sentiment data on self-hosted sites (aiai-sentiment). Falco clarified that the last 60 days backfill automatically after enabling, but the thread continues with debugging questions for cases where that doesn’t appear to run (read more, staff answer: read more, continued troubleshooting: read more).
Theme development tooling hit turbulence: an intermittent 500 error while uploading a theme via CLI led to requests for logs, clarification about which tooling was being used, and eventual suspicion about a problematic plugin in the build (#themes). The thread includes log excerpts and advice to clean up/remove a noisy plugin while investigating (read more, request for logs: read more, log excerpt: read more, plugin caution: read more). (Related references: theme CLI topic read more and theme install guide read more).
On tablets, the floating search widget reportedly reversed typed character order (searchtablet). Falco couldn’t reproduce with a specific environment and suggested trying different keyboards, and the reporter later narrowed it to the “floating keyboard” feature and a particular IME configuration (read more, staff debugging question: read more, additional findings: read more).
A UX gotcha: when the composer toolbar has many buttons, later buttons become effectively invisible—responders noted it’s horizontally scrollable, but the gradient hint may be too subtle (composer). The thread also points out similar affordance issues elsewhere in the UI (read more, suggestion to scroll: read more, gradient hint critique: read more).
#Feature
Users asked to display all likes/reactions on a post, specifically how to expand “and N more…”. Falco confirmed work is underway on a new UI component that would support this more cleanly (read more, staff update: read more).
The long-running discussion about SEO settings for tags (seotags) picked up again, with additional feedback proposing parallel fields for categories and major landing pages (Latest/Top/New): UI title/description and meta title/description (read more, recent “happens on fresh install” report: read more).
#Integrations
Discourse AI’s “Google Programmable Search / Custom Search API” guidance needs revisiting: Google discontinued a key feature, Vertex AI Search is too limited for broad replacement, and the team is researching new providers and potentially native web-search tools from major LLM platforms (aihow-to).
“Google discontinued this feature… Vertex is limited to a handful of domains, it is not a suitable alternative.” (read more)
A practical “should I self-host?” thread continued with advice ranging from “I can install it for free” to “use a dashboard to run one-click upgrades,” plus reminders that managed Discourse hosting/services can reduce operational risk (read more, dashboard mention: read more, hosting/provider angle: read more, follow-up question on provider choice: read more).
#Theme_component
Banner Featured Links got a compatibility refresh: swapping deprecated htmlSafe usage, updating for a new banner class, and a broader cleanup + tests. The maintainer shipped an update and pinned the TC to a newer core version (read more, maintainer update & changelog: read more).
#Plugin
In Discourse OpenID Connect (OIDC) (openid-connect), a request resurfaced to sync Discourse groups with OIDC-provided groups/claims, citing an earlier PR that wasn’t pursued and asking whether it could be integrated (read more).
The Geo Blocking plugin thread revisited Cloudflare considerations: LotusJeff asked about Cloudflare headers, and RGJ clarified what CF-IPCountry actually provides and noted the plugin relies on Discourse’s internal MaxMind database (plus pointing to Cloudflare best practices) (read more, clarification: read more, related guide: read more).
#Using_Disourse
A question came up about the /filter feature: whether filters can be used “in category” while still keeping a left-side navigation experience like category menus / doc-style sidebars (searchtopic-filter) (read more).
Falco focused on product direction + debugging across several threads:
Confirmed active work on a UI that can reveal the full list of post reactions/likes (read more).
Investigated the “reversed typing” report in the floating search widget and requested keyboard/environment checks (read more).
Clarified how AI Sentiment backfill works (automatic for the last 60 days) and set expectations for self-hosters trying to backfill older content (read more).
Flagged that Google discontinued a search feature used in Discourse AI documentation, and outlined plans to ship new search tooling with alternative providers and possibly native LLM web-search integrations (read more).
chapoi helped with practical “what component/setting do I need?” guidance:
Recommended Topic List Thumbnails for showing images on an article’s front page, connecting a support question to a proven theme component approach (read more, component reference: read more).
Challenged an assumption that missing view/reply counts were caused by a theme by checking a theme preview and reporting what they observed (read more).
That’s a wrap—may tomorrow’s imports be smooth, your toolbars scroll sideways on the first try, and your search widgets type in the correct direction.
New topics (last 24h): 3 — including discussions like the composer toolbar visibility on touch devices (read more), a privacy question about proxy access (read more), and embedding Bunny Stream videos (read more).
The composer toolbar overflow affordance came under scrutiny: awesomerobot noted Discourse hides the scroll arrow on touch devices and wondered if that assumption should change (read more), while renato suggested switching the logic to “show if a fine pointer is available” to avoid issues on touch-enabled laptops (read more).
The same thread also turned into a debugging checklist: safe mode showed the missing arrow for the OP, hinting at a theme/style interaction rather than core behavior (read more) and confirming that reproduction depends on environment/device quirks (read more).
A privacy/security concern: a user reported their forum could be accessed via “someone else’s URL” (proxy-style exposure) and asked how to prevent mirroring (read more). The accepted guidance was pragmatic: go fully private if needed and ban accounts showing obvious “visit everything” scraping behavior (read more).
A Ghost-theme-specific display issue: reply/view/activity counts disappeared inside a category topic list when the category had no subcategories, due to the chosen rendering outlet not appearing in that context (read more). The report included screenshots and narrowed the problem to an outlet selection tradeoff (read more).
Hosted customers asked how to recover individual missing CDN uploads (one image + two JSON attachments) after a hiccup, particularly when they’re comfortable self-hosting but unsure what options exist on hosted (read more; read more).
Embedding video from Bunny CDN Stream: attempts to paste a Bunny “player.mediadelivery.net” URL resulted in a plain link rather than an inline embed, prompting questions about allowed/whitelisted oneboxes and embedding rules (read more).
Discourse AI tool calls timing out: a user shared screenshots showing tool execution timing out during script testing and asked whether Discourse’s timeout can be adjusted (read more; read more).
Automation composer formatting: users trying to paste special markup like [wrap] into automation text fields found that rich-text pasting escapes content; renato pointed out a fix that landed, while acknowledging the broader “rich editor vs plain markdown” expectation mismatch (read more).
Sentiment setup and historical backfill: Falco pointed users back to the self-hosting guide for Sentiment/Emotion (read more)—and the follow-up clarified that the dashboard works, but the community wants more than 60 days of backfill and needs to know how far back is feasible (read more). For reference, the guide being cited is here: read more.
#Site feedback
Meta experimentation around “content gardening” doubled as a process question: Canapin explained they often flag their own old posts to request edits, but after a previous staff edit the flag UI only offered “It’s illegal,” so they asked for a better path (read more). darkpixlz solved the immediate need by turning the post into a wiki so the author can update it directly (read more).
That same exchange tied together several “knowledge curation” threads: Canapin wanted to update their earlier post about monitoring uploads (read more) to point at a relevant plugin and topic gallery tooling (read more), and darkpixlz noted staff-attention DMs can be replied to later since they tend not to close (read more).
#Plugin
ActivityPub troubleshooting continued with confirmatory logs showing repeated /webfinger/handle/validate requests and a follow-up find-by-handle lookup, suggesting a consistent reproduction pattern across installs (read more).
Topic Voting feature request: someone asked whether advanced search can be limited to “votable” areas and/or sorted by votes, referencing an older closed related question (read more; read more).
#Self-Hosting
Cloudflare best practices got fresh field notes from a long-term proxy-mode setup: key takeaways included ensuring the Cloudflare template is in app.yml, bypassing cache for /session/*, and skipping WAF on post creation/edits—plus a nuanced WordPress-comment caching strategy to handle bursty traffic (read more).
#Theme component
Topic List Previews (TLP) theme component: a user reported that visiting /u/user/messages/tags/abc was being auto-switched into a “tiles topic lists” display mode and asked how to keep messages on the default display instead (read more).
Anchor links inside Discourse topics: renato reported they can no longer reproduce the issue after a fix merged, and moved toward closing the report unless someone still experiences it (read more).
A “coding agents + SSH” anecdote: a community member described being emboldened as a Discourse admin by using coding agents to resurrect a long-dead vBulletin install—an interesting signal of how admin workflows are changing (read more).
Discourse MCP setup in OpenAI Codex CLI saw a brief update: a follow-up post was deleted by the author, leaving the thread without that additional context (read more).
awesomerobot investigated why the composer toolbar overflow arrow wasn’t visible and asked whether safe mode showed it—strongly suggesting a theme/CSS interaction (read more). They also clarified current intent: the arrow is intentionally hidden on touch devices because horizontal scrolling is “easier,” while openly questioning whether the UI should change to show it anyway (read more).
chapoi diagnosed the Ghost theme issue where views/replies/activity disappear inside certain category lists, pointing to the topic-list-after-category outlet not being available when there’s no category context, and noted they’d check whether an easy outlet switch exists (read more).
Falco supported a Sentiment/Emotion deployment by confirming whether the self-hosting setup guide was followed (read more) and then pushed for clarification on what data range was actually backfilled so troubleshooting could proceed with clear expectations (read more).
renato weighed in on the composer toolbar affordance logic, proposing a refinement: show/hide the arrow based on screen width or fine pointer availability, rather than the broad “touch device” rule (read more). They also noted an anchor-link bug appears fixed and queued the topic for closure unless further reports come in (read more), and confirmed an automation formatting/paste issue should be addressed by recent changes while acknowledging remaining UX tension (read more).
Sign-off: Yesterday’s meta moral: if your toolbar controls vanish, don’t panic—sometimes the missing arrow is just playing hide-and-seek until you flip into safe mode.
diskuz Call – Voice and video calls inside Discourse (P2P, no external apps) (installation background: How to install plugins in Discourse).