lindsey announced a Discourse Solved improvement: unsolved topics in support categories can now show a “Me too” button so impacted members can opt-in for a notification when the topic is solved (read more). Follow-up discussion quickly turned to admin-side reporting/threshold alerts (read more) and whether “Me too” should bump old topics to improve visibility (read more). For context, this builds on how support categories are configured for solved workflows (read more).
The new nested replies feature continued to evolve in public: bulk-toggling for existing topics is already available via bulk actions (read more), while longer-term concerns include “safe” conversions for large historical categories (read more). There was also clarification that enabling nested mode isn’t destructive and can be safely reversed (read more), plus a reminder there’s a dedicated test category for experimentation (read more).
A small but practical UX nit: when viewing Upcoming Changes through a filtered admin notification URL, the Preview link can disappear—making it harder to validate what’s about to roll out (read more).
A regression/oversight: regular users can’t see who is a group owner, even though the data is present—awesomerobot identified it as an unintentional change after a 2023 refactor and opened a fix (read more). This continues the long-running thread about group owners and group management expectations (read more).
The “reachable mention” composer warning for uppercase usernames appears to have side-effects for AI agents: zogstrip noted their earlier fix exposed an edge case where an AI agent mention triggers the warning unexpectedly (read more).
Locale detection with AI: Norwegian is being detected as no while the localization system expects nb_NO, and the proposed remedy is adding explicit mappings in the system prompt until prompts can automatically incorporate the “supported languages” setting (read more).
Custom user fields: a report that a custom dropdown field can contain an unselectable value at signup got a concrete mitigation—sanitization already exists on profile updates, so the suggestion is to mirror that logic on the sign-up endpoint (read more).
A minor UI inconsistency: changing the default LLM should ideally update the UI state consistently; awesomerobot flagged it as small but worth polishing and opened a PR (read more).
#Theme component
Lilly shipped a lightweight, translation-friendly theme component to clarify the ambiguous Reply button labeling by appending context (e.g., “Reply to Topic”) without breaking non-English locales (read more). This spun out of nested-replies UI discussion and earlier CSS-only approaches that weren’t locale-aware (read more) and an older “link replies” / reply-button-context workaround (read more).
Working with the new discourse-patch-triage bot: isaac clarified how to invoke the bot (@patch-triage + plain English), what it can do, and why it can’t commit to forks—meaning non-staff contributors must apply changes themselves (read more).
Signup UX question: you can prefill email= on /signup, but username= doesn’t appear to prepopulate—prompting a discussion about whether this is supported and how it differs from login-page parameter behavior (read more). A related older thread about prepopulating email on the login page was referenced (but it’s not the same endpoint) (read more).
Fresh installs: a new admin registration flow where the activation email didn’t arrive even though discourse-doctor test email succeeded led to troubleshooting around EmailLog inspection and differentiating “sent vs delivered” (read more). The canonical “start here” email troubleshooting guide was also cited (read more).
API posting warnings: a report (in Chinese) about DistributedMutex warnings during API-created posts led to performance/Redis/Postgres diagnostics and a hint that ARM64 and/or one-time AI plugin initialization might be involved (read more). Follow-up testing suggested the warning disappeared after toggling the AI plugin and may require longer observation to confirm a pattern (read more).
#Feature
Moderation workflow idea: multi-flagging—select several spam/off-topic posts and flag them in one action, enabling staff to process a batch together (and optionally split items out) (read more).
Branding/UX request: add a separate mobile dark logo setting specifically for the login/signup splash screen, so the unauthenticated “hero” logo doesn’t have to match the compact logged-in mobile header logo (read more).
lindsey introduced the new “Me too” button for unsolved support topics, framing it as an end-user opt-in for solution notifications and inviting ideas for admin-side surfacing/reporting (read more; discussion follow-up: read more).
dax clarified that the “Me too” feature isn’t enabled on Meta, then enabled it on try.discourse.org for testing—briefly derailed by a real-world power/internet outage mid-setup (read more; outage follow-up: read more).
awesomerobot did a lot of “glue work” across product and polish:
Explained that “Me too” is independent of Boost (and Boost won’t subscribe you to solution notifications) (read more).
Confirmed the “group owner” info is present but not rendered and opened a fix to restore visibility to regular users (read more).
Opened a PR for a minor default LLM UI consistency issue (read more).
Addressed a design concern in the Graceful theme (a pattern with unfortunate connotations) and proposed a replacement pattern (read more).
Applied an update to address reported issues in the Air theme (read more).
markvanlan continued to shape expectations around nested replies operations and admin control: bulk actions can toggle nested mode (read more); historical conversion is intentionally cautious because reply intent in flat mode may not translate cleanly (read more); and nested vs flat is an admin decision rather than a per-user preference (read more).
isaac documented how to interact with @patch-triage, what it can do today, and why it can’t push commits to forks—plus a note that enabling fork write-access is being raised internally (read more; follow-up: read more).
zogstrip flagged an AI-adjacent edge case: a mention validation change appears to surface a composer warning when mentioning AI agents (an unintended consequence of an earlier fix) (read more).
fzngagan explained the nuanced backfill behavior for default sidebar categories—it applies deltas to preserve user preferences rather than hard-resetting everyone—and linked the PR where this behavior was introduced (read more).
nat confirmed that adding explicit language-code mappings in the AI system prompt is the right short-term fix for the Norwegian locale mismatch, and noted an upcoming improvement to incorporate site “supported languages” into the generic prompt (read more).
supermathie helped troubleshoot missing registration emails on a fresh install by recommending checking EmailLog from the Rails console and distinguishing “not sent” vs “sent but not delivered” (read more).
HAWK kept the #Enterprise conversation moving on how communities break as they scale—especially around moderation consistency, taxonomy drift, and using temporary tags as a pressure valve before committing to new categories (read more).
Yesterday, Meta managed to ship a “Me too” button, debate threaded conversations, and survive a literal power outage—so if your admin panel looks extra lively today, blame the electricity for taking a coffee break.
The “Me too” counter semantics in Solved improvements sparked a mini UX philosophy thread: RGJ argued the counter shouldn’t start at 1 because “too implies additional users,” while lindsey clarified the intent is “impacted users” including the topic author; the back-and-forth is neatly captured across RGJ’s feedback and @lindsey’s rationale
Excitement around nested replies continues, with users asking how it might relate to voting mechanics and sorting logic in “Top” — jumping-off point here: read more
#Theme component
Lilly shipped rapid updates to Discourse Reply Button Labels, adding more label flexibility (post + topic), plus handling for the floating topic reply button in nested topic views; follow the update trail here: read more
putty released Hide Votes Left for topic-voting, then awesomerobot pointed out a newly-added core setting (Topic voting enable vote limits) that may eliminate “set a comically high limit” workarounds—great example of theme components and core settings meeting in the middle: read more
ted reported (and immediately prototyped a fix for) a composer bug where a horizontal rule steals focus from the emoji picker when navigating with ↓, including a PR link for review; reproduction + fix discussion: read more
ted questioned a superfluous-looking button in the “edit bookmark” dialog; the thread quickly turned into “desktop vs mobile behavior” nuance, with chapoi agreeing it feels heavy-handed for toggling a single control: read more
RGJ nearly deleted a category by accident because the Delete button is visually prominent while Save sits far below in the simplified category screen—classic “danger zone placement” concern: read more
Docs UX friction: Moin asked how to get the TOC back in doc categories after interacting with timeline, and also called out that translation toggling becomes oddly dependent on timeline visibility; the UX question (and screen capture) is here: read more
Profile preferences clarity: ted suggested showing uneditable user fields as disabled inputs (instead of hiding them), while chapoi raised the possibility that some sites use them as “staff notes” and asked what confusion triggered the idea: read more
Topic tracking expectations: a user noticed “NEW” state clearing sooner than expected, and chapoi/NateDhaliwal explored how indicators behave for new vs unread tracking (including temporary indicators that disappear on refresh): read more
#Feature
Moin proposed suppressing “New features available!” notifications on brand new forums (similar to how other onboarding-time suppressions exist), arguing that “everything is new” on day one: read more
A small but practical branding request: add a separate dark-mode splash screen logo for login/signup; implementation work is underway and looking for feedback on naming + fallback behavior: read more
#Plugin
The long-running Custom Wizard thread got a concrete maintenance moment: angus confirmed a reported issue is addressed and advised updating to the latest plugin version, while also pointing folks to documentation for more advanced “scenario” use-cases: read more
Uploads debate: users asked why PNG→JPEG conversion settings were hidden, noting it complicates sharing transparent PNG assets and can push teams back to external file sharing; see the complaint and follow-ups: read more
martin shipped product news for Horizon, making high context topic cards the default and recapping what they surface in lists (signals like solved, voting, excerpts, tags): read more
In parallel, martin clarified that “Feedback” and “Preview” links in Upcoming Changes are optional per change item, and noted he’d nudge internally to add more of them: read more
lindsey weighed in on the “Me too” semantics for the new solved improvements flow, explaining why the counter starts at 1 to represent the topic author as an impacted user: read more
awesomerobot highlighted a newly-added Topic Voting configuration that can remove vote limits entirely (avoiding huge “votes left” numbers), while noting a UI-hiding component can still be useful in mixed-limit setups: read more
chapoi did a bit of cross-thread triage and UX calibration:
Pinged for visibility on the composer emoji picker bug (and potential fix): read more
Agreed the bookmark dialog toggle feels like overkill on desktop too: read more
Asked for more context on the “show disabled user fields” idea, noting hidden-field use-cases might exist: read more
Compared observations on “NEW”/tracking indicator behavior (including the “gone on refresh” clue): read more
HAWK added an enterprise-facing perspective on information architecture scaling, reinforcing that “zillions of categories” can become a stability/performance cliff and that tags often scale better than deep category trees: read more
Yesterday’s vibes: between “Me too” starting at 1, nested replies evolving fast, and Horizon cards surfacing every signal under the sun, Meta basically spent the day fine-tuning all the tiny UI details that somehow matter a lot.
The most-loved post of the day was martin’s announcement about streamlined Events category creation — read more.
Interesting Topics
#Announcements
martin announced a much smoother way to create Events categories using the Discourse Calendar and Event plugin (calendar-and-eventevents), rolling key settings into one guided flow — read more. Related background: the underlying plugin is documented here (read more), and it builds on the same “easy category setup” work previously done for Solved support categories (read more) and Voting ideas categories (read more).
In the ongoing discussion about nested replies, markvanlan shared that Discourse considered enhancing the Post Voting approach, but decided nesting is simpler to maintain and offers a better experience — read more.
The new solved improvements that let members signal “I’m experiencing this too” continue to spark UX discussion; darkpixlz noted the “me too” state being auto-selected for the topic author feels a bit odd at first glance — read more. A closely-related feature request about de-emphasizing “me too” style replies also resurfaced here (read more).
A security-minded thread asked whether Discourse containers are vulnerable to Nginx CVE-2026-42945; sam clarified Discourse will update the base image and noted the default rewrite rules are not vulnerable — read more. Context from the original question is here (read more).
On the Free hosting plan, a user asked how to create tags in-topic; darkpixlz confirmed tags aren’t available on the free plan right now (upgrade or self-host to use them) — read more. The question (with screenshot) is here (read more), and the Free Plan beta announcement is referenced here (read more).
A small but important support question popped up about topic deletion permissions (“I cannot anymore delete topics, why?”) — read more.
In Theme Creator, exporting a theme can result in a white screen on mobile; Lilly reproduced it specifically in mobile viewports and described the “download modal → blank screen → no way back” behavior — read more. Original report (with screenshot) here (read more).
A new core bug report describes an uncaught TypeError when submitting flags that require a custom message (e.g. notify_moderators), causing the modal to close but the flag not to submit — read more.
Mobile UX snag: Lilly reported getting trapped in full-screen reactions on iOS Chrome, with no obvious way to close the overlay besides closing the browser tab/window — read more.
A small admin UX improvement request: add a direct link from the deprecated “Auto silence first post regex” setting description to the correct Watched Words page (Silence) — read more.
In the bookmark UI, a thread questioned a superfluous toggle in the edit bookmark dialog; after awesomerobot suggested placement improvements (read more), chapoi removed the toggle entirely — read more.
#Feature
A reactions customization request: when discourse_reactions_experimental_allow_any_emoji is enabled, the “More…” button is represented by a grey — users asked for a better symbol (or theme/CSS approach) — read more. This continues a longer reactions discussion thread here (read more).
#Theme component
In “Discourse Reply Button Labels”, Lilly shipped an update to toggle the Topic reply button label on mobile, while noting that extending the same approach to the per-post reply button risks breaking the already-crowded topic footer layout — read more. Related historical context on “Reply” text/translation concerns is linked here (read more), and a compatibility fix for the Combined Auth Button with the Left Side Hamburger component also landed recently (read more, plus the hamburger component itself: read more).
A WordPress/embedding SEO concern: older topics published via WordPress embed appear to be missing X-Robots-Tag: noindex and canonical tags that previously existed, potentially affecting indexing/canonicalization — read more. angus asked clarifying questions to narrow down when/how the canonical might have reverted (read more). For broader embedding context, Tecnoblog’s ongoing feedback thread also continues to evolve (read more).
tobiaseigen suggested nominating Discourse for the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry, framing it as a light-effort, high-upside visibility/credibility win tied to UN SDGs — read more.
#Community Building
A practical community-building pitch: could Discourse work for a small town government (public outreach + resident communications + visitor participation)? The thread explores the “hosted vs self-hosted” tradeoffs and the realities of small-town staffing/scale — read more.
martin shipped a product update that makes it far easier to spin up Events categories (auto-enabling key settings and consolidating configuration) — read more.
sam responded on the Nginx CVE-2026-42945 thread, confirming Discourse will update the base image and noting default rewrite rules aren’t vulnerable — read more.
Falco followed up in the Tecnoblog embedded-comments feedback thread to confirm the login-flow friction in embeds is now fixed and pointed to the upstream change — read more.
markvanlan continued the rollout conversation around nested replies, including why Discourse didn’t pursue a Post Voting plugin-based approach for nesting — read more.
chapoi acted quickly on a UX nit: removed the superfluous toggle in the edit bookmark dialog after community feedback — read more.
awesomerobot helped refine that same bookmark-dialog UX discussion by suggesting the control be repositioned (before it was ultimately removed) — read more.
HAWK contributed to the #Enterprise discussion on scaling communities, emphasizing the value of nurturing power users and sharing research on sustaining them over time — read more.
Yesterday’s meta.discourse.org was a mix of scheduling events, dodging CVEs, and trying to escape mobile reaction overlays—classic “just another day in community ops” energy.
Prempavee hit a wall when trying to self-delete topics/posts, and the thread uncovered both normal Discourse limits (no replies + <24h) and likely nested-mode-specific breakage; see I cannot anymore delete topics , why? and the key clarification from Falcoread more.
Related: the baseline rule-of-thumb is reinforced by the linked permissions doc: Trust Level Permissions Reference.
A hosted customer couldn’t upgrade from Free to Starter and felt pushed into a Pro trial; mcwumbly confirmed Starter was “deprioritized” on pricing but should still be available to upgrade into, and began investigating the account-specific behavior in No starter upgrade option (team replies: here, here, here).
Reverse proxy/high availability setup: Eviepayne needed a declarative way to persist set_real_ip_from + real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For; inside the container’s nginx to avoid rate-limit pain (429s). The back-and-forth is in Reverse proxy X-Forwarded-For with a pointer to the “shared nginx” guide that wasn’t what they needed read more.
Nested replies testing continues to shake out sharp edges: Lilly reported that post admin wrench menu actions appear to fail silently in nested view, requiring a switch back to flat mode to perform moderation actions in Nested mode disables post admin wrench menu actionsread more.
Prempavee reported a struggle recovering a deleted post/topic and an inability to even open the affected topic (HTTP 500); Falco suggested it “appears to be a bug when trying to visit a deleted nested topic” and planned to investigate in Im struggling to recover deleted post, how to fix?read more.
A report in Chinese flagged layout/display issues when opening the tag-group management page on a mobile browser (Modernize Foundation theme context mentioned) in 手机浏览器打开管理标签组页面显示有错乱.
Read-state behavior may have changed: a user observed that topics seem to be marked “read” immediately upon entering (instead of after scrolling/reading), with discussion in Removing NEW status from topics - behaviour changed?.
Plugin naming/branding collisions: a developer warned about an upcoming official “Workflow” name and asked about clashes; j.jaffeux replied that Discourse naming would stay and suggested using an alternative namespace scheme, leading to a tense but informative exchange in Potential Upcoming Plugin Name Clash - “Workflow”read more.
Custom Wizard usability question: a user couldn’t find “advanced” options for a dropdown field and asked whether something needs enabling in Custom Wizard Plugin .
#Community Building
Practical governance concerns for civic use-cases: advice emphasized that institutional clarity (moderation responsibility, “official statements,” authentication, security, endorsement risk) is harder than the technical setup in Discourse for small town government, with a follow-up note on privacy implications of hosting choices read more.
mcwumbly investigated a hosted-plan UI/account issue where a Free site could not see the Starter upgrade path, explained that Starter has been deprioritized on the pricing page but should still be available, and attempted an immediate fix before deciding it needed deeper review in No starter upgrade option (continued: follow-up, attempted quick fix here, and next-steps here).
j.jaffeux held the line on product naming despite third-party plugin conflicts, recommending a different naming scheme for unofficial plugins and explaining why Discourse can’t realistically avoid every ecosystem collision, in Potential Upcoming Plugin Name Clash - “Workflow” (continued: reply and closing position here).
That’s a wrap: may tomorrow’s upgrades show the plan you actually want, and may nested mode let moderators press the wrench buttons without having to “go flat” first.
Other threads with fresh replies worth a quick click-through:
Enterprise calendaring pain points surfaced again, with a concrete pointer to ICS in notification emails (read more) and broader adoption friction in “breaking points as communities grow” (read more).
Several admin/self-hosting “gotchas” came up: a Discourse ID lock-out scenario (read more), plus ongoing questions about updating the discourse/discourse Docker image (read more).
A couple of long-running implementation/config threads also moved forward: command-line backups (read more) and an S3 migration/rebuild troubleshooting tip referencing an aws-sdk downgrade workaround (read more; related: read more).
Design/theme nits continued to roll in, including a Quote Callouts styling edge case (read more) and a Foundation theme modernization thread referencing a mobile UI bug report (read more).
TroLLoBlogger reported a crash after attempting to update via the admin UI, traced to a plugin JS build timing out; the thread dug into whether single vCPU + non-core plugin assets should trigger a safer update path (read more).
The Norwegian locale detection mismatch (no vs nb_NO) got a concrete improvement: nat noted the suggestion is now baked into the default agent config (with a GitHub PR linked) (read more).
A report (in Chinese) flagged that hyperlinks inside the official AI plugin output weren’t clickable, with a screenshot illustrating the “tap does nothing” behavior (read more).
A TypeError when submitting certain “require_message” flags is now on the team’s radar; sam acknowledged the report and invited a PR (read more).
A brand-new hosted admin hit an “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private” during email verification; it turned out to be a testing-in-the-wrong-session issue (admin logged in elsewhere), resolved after retrying with a truly clean session (read more).
Reverse proxy operators discussed getting X-Forwarded-For real IP handling correct; Lilly recommended making it rebuild-proof via replace: in app.yml rather than editing container configs in-place (read more).
A Custom Wizard admin asked how to remove test submissions “via Rails” after finding manual deletion isn’t available in the UI, and noted that “ChatGPT fails a lot here” for the specifics (read more).
An iOS app embedding scenario raised questions about community members who can open invite links in Safari but not in an app/webview; troubleshooting focused on whether the app is a webview wrapper and where auth is failing (read more).
A dev-oriented question revisited pre-populating signup fields from URL parameters (email + username). ted mapped the current flow (Rails → cookie → Ember route/controller/template) and suggested checking team appetite for a PR before plugin work (read more).
#Announcements
Discourse shipped more flexible RSVPs for recurring events: the Going button now offers “this occurrence” vs “this and all future,” reducing reminder noise and making attendance lists more accurate (read more).
“High context topic cards” being enabled by default in Horizon prompted a request for category-level configurability, since different spaces may want different info density (read more).
The Better bulk tag management announcement thread got a quick status ping from nat (“it’ll be back soon™”), implying a temporary hiccup or rollout pause (read more).
#Self-hosting
A self-hosted admin described a worst-case lockout: disabled Discourse ID before ensuring a local admin login existed, leading to “No login methods are configured” and a non-delivering /u/admin-login email path (read more).
#Community Building
A real-world Discourse deployment highlight: Berlin State Library’s Discourse-based community project Wibiblio was shared ahead of a Re:publica Berlin talk, with links to the conference session and project site (read more).
Falco dug into the admin-UI update crash and focused on whether machine constraints (single vCPU) + non-core plugins should change update guidance, asking for server specs and looping in david (read more; read more; read more; read more).
david clarified that prebuilt assets should still be pulled even for web-based updates, while noting that the failing plugin isn’t core—so its assets won’t be distributed the same way (read more).
nat delivered two quick hits: a status note in the bulk-tag-management announcement thread (read more) and an AI-locale agent improvement update, confirming the Norwegian/Greek language code guidance is now included by default (read more).
lindsey posted a full release note for Improved Events RSVPs, detailing the new drop-down RSVP semantics for recurring events on desktop and mobile (read more).
sam acknowledged the reported TypeError on custom-content flag submissions, confirmed the team will look, and welcomed a PR from the reporter (read more).
If yesterday taught us anything, it’s this: may your rebuilds finish before the 120-second timeout, and may your RSVPs always apply to the right event occurrence.
sam shipped a quality-of-life improvement for Discourse AI: you can now star common AI conversations so they stay pinned at the top of your AI chat list (controlled via an upcoming change setting). read moreai
david published May 19th 2026 intermediate releases (focused on critical/security fixes), with links to multiple changelogs for admins to review before/after upgrading. read morerelease-notes
Recurring events got a usability boost: RSVPs can now be scoped more flexibly (single occurrence vs. future occurrences), and folks immediately started pressure-testing edge cases like “nth weekday of the month” scheduling. read morecalendar-and-event
FormKit got a polish pass with a checkbox redesign (native checkbox visually hidden, with a presentational checkmark span for styling/animation). chapoi asked everyone to report issues against the upcoming change. read more
A small but meaningful consistency tweak is in progress: when discourse_reactions_experimental_allow_any_emoji is enabled, the “More…” affordance shouldn’t show as :-)—awesomerobot confirmed they’re working on a fix. read morereactions
On moderation best practices, a new thread asked whether Discourse ships with a built-in abusive/profanity list; the practical answer was “no default list,” but Watched Words is the recommended approach, with flexible matching and actions (Block, Require Approval, Flag, Censor, etc.). read more (see also the guide: read more) watched-words
A nested replies gotcha: an admin couldn’t Change Ownership (and also wanted to “promote a reply into a topic”). The workaround was to temporarily switch to flat mode; the underlying issue is tracked as nested-mode wrench actions failing. read more (related bug: read more) nested-replies
Self-hosters running an external PostgreSQL 18.3 hit backup failures due to a pg_dump client/server version mismatch (container has pg_dump 15.x). The thread explores whether to align Postgres versions vs. upgrading the client. read more
A report of Internal Server Error while approving new users (with OAuth2 authentication) prompted initial triage questions about server logs (/logs) and browser console errors. read more
A tricky crash: TypeError when submitting flags with custom content (require_message flags). Investigation suggests it can reproduce in nested topics, where a user can flag a post twice via different reasons, leading to missing actions_summary entries and a frontend crash. read more (safe-mode troubleshooting requested here: read more, and the general safe-mode guide: read more)
A mobile-only report: scrolling to the bottom of the nested replies testing topic can hit a 404 on mobile, while desktop seems fine—Falco flagged it as likely related to recent nested read-state changes. read moremobilenested-replies
Topic voting regression(?) watch: users can’t view who voted on a closed topic—the UI shows nothing and the API returns an empty list, echoing an older historical report that “this used to be an issue.” read moretopic-voting
Nested mode continues to surface edge cases: post wrench menu actions may appear but silently fail in nested mode; Falco clarified expected behavior around defaults vs. propagation, and linked a fix PR for the wrench-action failure. read morenested-replies
#feature
Feature request: when bulk converting Topics → Messages, the modal lacks a way to add a Group recipient (useful for converting a category into a group inbox). The request proposes parity with the Messages → Topics flow, which already offers richer targeting options. read more
WP Discourse + WooCommerce admins asked whether it’s “safe” to let users change Discourse usernames (potentially diverging from WordPress user_login) to avoid awkward auto-generated logins and privacy/UX issues—seeking a recommended “source of truth” strategy for existing large installs. read more (related WordPress embed SEO troubleshooting: read more)
sam introduced starred AI chats—a new way to keep frequently used AI conversations at the top of your list, controlled via an upcoming-change toggle. read more
david posted intermediate release notes for May 19, 2026, pointing admins to the relevant changelog pages for security/critical fixes. read more
awesomerobot was active across UX and moderation tooling:
confirmed a consistency fix for the reactions “More…” emoji is underway. read more
recommended “delete and block” as the best anti-spam cleanup pattern when discussing purging silenced users. read more
continued iterating on “Solved improvements,” including removing OP from a “me too” count and confirming the site text can be customized safely. read more and read moresolved
Falco helped triage multiple nested-replies issues and set expectations on behavior:
connected a mobile 404 report to nested read-state changes. read more
clarified how nested mode bug reports should be filed (one topic per bug, in Contribute > Bug) and linked work to fix post wrench action failures. read more and read more
linked a fix PR for recovering deleted content in another nested-replies thread. read more
HAWK provided a detailed breakdown of Watched Words capabilities (phrases, wildcards, CSV import/export, and multiple actions like Block/Flag/Censor/etc.), helping guide moderation setup choices. read more (reference guide: read more)
also reassured enterprise admins that calendar/events is under active development and video conferencing is on the roadmap. read more
chapoi announced the FormKit checkbox redesign upcoming change and asked for reports if any styling/behavior regressions appear. read more
tgxworld attempted to reproduce a flag-submission TypeError locally and suggested isolating with safe mode as part of the debugging workflow. read more
martin followed up on “Events category creation” automation feedback, asking clarifying questions about what a “sidebar equivalent” setup option should look like. read morecalendar-and-event
featheredtoast noted an “unintentional side effect” related to clearing stuck web upgrades in the discourse/discourse Docker flow, and pointed to an in-progress fix in discourse_docker. read more
lindsey helped close the loop on recurring event RSVP confusion by pointing to the newly shipped granular RSVP behavior in the improved events announcement. read more (feature announcement: read more)
Yesterday’s Meta energy was unmistakable: if your day includes starred AI chats, smoother checkboxes, and fewer nested-replies gremlins, you’re doing it right.
If you’re catching up, these quick links were among the busiest touchpoints: the new AI-bot composer flow (read more), Discourse’s web-first stance (read more), and a migration speed deep-dive for phpBB imports (read more).
ducks published a clear “web-first” line in the sand: Discourse won’t force mobile users into an app—positioning this as an explicit alternative to platform lock-in patterns (read more).
#Announcements
A new docked composer for AI bot conversations aims to make back-and-forth exchanges feel continuous (and less “click Reply again”) via the ai_bot_enable_docked_composer upcoming-change flag (composeraiai-bot) (read more).
Sites using Discourse Reactions can opt into a layout tweak that moves the reply count to keep reaction rows aligned and consistent (reactions) (read more).
The MCP + Data ExplorerOffice Hours replay is up, showcasing “ask your community data questions like a teammate” workflows and how AI can generate/analyze Data Explorer queries from plain English (webinaroffice-hours) (read more).
#Migration
A phpBB importer performance thread dug into why migrations can look I/O or DB-bound even with low CPU usage—and why Redis timeouts plus “Skipping” errors are worth investigating early (phpbb) (read more).
A pricing/free-plan concern thread tracked changes in how plans are presented and flagged features appearing as “Upgrade to unlock,” with helpful pointers to prior context like the Free plan beta discussion (read more; background: read more, and related pricing UX thread: read more).
An “update available” email was reported to contain a broken release-notes link (missing the leading v in the changelog URL), yielding a 404 for admins clicking through (read more).
An approval workflow problem report showed an Internal Server Error when approving new users, prompting baseline questions about whether the install is standard and whether an external DB is involved (read more).
A category banner/theme-component issue report described category descriptions disappearing after clicking a tag and intermittently returning after refresh; the OP referenced earlier reports that look similar (read more; earlier threads: read more, read more).
A self-hosting/multisite admin asked how to add new sites without rebuilding and whether site definitions can be managed externally (outside container hooks) for easier operations (multisite) (read more).
A moderation/automation question asked how to auto-reply after a flagged post is approved (e.g., enforcing “English only”), noting current Automation plugin triggers don’t seem to cover this use case (read more).
An SEO/language oddity report described Google indexing a Meta topic in Italian instead of English, causing the page to open in Italian for the searcher—raising questions about how crawlers choose localized variants (seogoogle) (read more).
Emoji autocomplete reportedly breaks when the typed term includes special characters (example: ü), and chat additionally throws a console error during emoji selection (emoji) (read more).
A long-running chat security concern resurfaced: users say the chat plugin can expose IPs via hotlinking behavior and are asking for mitigation guidance (chat) (read more).
#Theme component
A Tag Icons thread suggested a likely regression source: tags with underscores may no longer match expected slugs—so icons appear in some contexts (like the sidebar) but not others, depending on slug normalization (officialtag-icons) (read more).
#Self-Hosting
Cloudflare R2’s S3-compatibility status was revisited: a report says R2 now works for backups/restores (contrary to the older “incompatible” doc note), and the thread includes suggestions to update the documentation (cdnbackups) (read more).
A staff-auditing gap was flagged: undeleting a post doesn’t create a staff action log entry, unlike delete/undelete topic actions—making it harder to attribute restores without server logs (read more).
ducks kicked off discussion with the companion topic for the Discourse blog post, “Discourse Will Never Block You From the Web” (read more).
keegan announced the docked composer improvement for AI bot conversations and pointed admins to the upcoming-changes flag ai_bot_enable_docked_composer (read more).
Danielle posted the MCP + Data Explorer Office Hours replay and outlined practical community analytics questions the demo answers (read more).
davidb introduced an opt-in layout tweak for sites running Reactions, moving the reply count to improve alignment consistency across posts (read more).
Falco shared additional custom SVG splash-screen examples (noting improved results with newer Gemini Flash), continuing experimentation around branded loading experiences (read more); and separately encouraged contributions to keep Mermaid current (“a PR is welcome!”) (read more).
cocococosti added migration-pragmatic guidance on speeding phpBB imports by improving the source database (indexes/views/settings), and hinted at faster migration tooling in the works (read more).
awesomerobot confirmed a change so brand-new forums won’t get retroactive “New features available!” notices, linking the core commit (read more); and also opened a PR to bring back/improve the removed tag info button experience (read more).
mae noted they had already submitted Discourse to the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry after a recommendation (read more).
martin followed up on Events category creation automation, considering whether Discourse could detect the Right Sidebar Blocks component and enable relevant events integrations automatically (read more).
nat merged a contributor PR (with added specs) for a translation/language-code issue, confirming the fix landed (read more).
Yesterday’s vibe: between a docked AI composer and a renewed commitment to the open web, Meta managed to be both more chat-like and more browser-first—while still finding time to ship pixel-perfect alignment tweaks (read more, read more, read more).
Docs get a reading-first UX with Simple Mode (read more)
A native iOS+Android Discourse client demo lands in General (read more)
bug reports roll in for Chat “starred” navigation (read more) and a Horizon theme folding-phone header layout (read more)
Mobile UX nits around reactions/back-button behavior (read more) plus a +1 reactions hover popover issue (read more)
A couple of Support threads: a theme-component import error (read more) and topic view-counts not incrementing on one topic (read more)
Interesting Topics
#Announcements
saquetim announced “Simple Mode” for Discourse Doc Categories, introducing a reading-first doc view (comments hidden behind a toggle, deep-links auto-expand), plus a documentation-shaped topic list for “Updated”-style scanning (doc-categories) — read more. Related background: the plugin overview is here (read more), and there was also discussion about getting confused by existing replies in doc-like topics (read more).
In the Events space, nathank proposed a more obviously “upcoming events” category experience (calendar block + topic list on one page) and called out the current “clever sort” as not visually clear enough (calendar-and-eventevents) — read more.
Ongoing feedback on “Me too” indicators for Solved/issue workflows: Noble_Fish asked for category-level configurability to avoid confusion when combining voting + solved + “Me too” in mixed-purpose categories (solved) — read more.
The long-running work on automatic switching between mobile/desktop modes picked up folding-phone-related context: david noted unfolded folding phones intentionally show “desktop view,” and the team wants fixes that don’t rely on disabling the viewport-based mode toggle — read more. The folding-phone header breakage report that cross-linked into this is here (read more).
A developer asked how notification consolidation/grouping works across UI and database/API (reply + reaction notifications), and whether it’s possible to disable consolidation so every action yields an append-only record — read more.
nicolsdennis shared a native mobile Discourse client app demo (iOS/Android), including early notes on plugin compatibility (official plugins now; more coming) (show-and-tell) — read more. The app also popped up as a real-world follow-up in a broader “convert a forum into a real app?” thread (read more).
Chat usability: Shauny reported the floating chat window “Back” behavior forgets Starred context and can’t default to Starred, undermining the point of favoriting. sam zeroed in on the underlying issue—floating chat interacting with browser history:
“…we are allowing chat in floating mode to even be involved with web page history.”
— read more. Background feature: “Star your favorite chat channels” (read more). zogstrip pointed to an incoming fix via PR (read more).
Theme/device quirk: nathank reported the Horizon theme header breaking on mid-size viewports (640–767px)—notably painful on folding-phone aspect ratios. Lilly provided a CSS workaround and narrowed it to header layout behavior in that breakpoint range (horizon-theme) — read more. The related “viewport based mobile mode” discussion was also tied back into the broader mobile/desktop switching work (read more).
A core/bundled plugin issue: hovering the “+1” reaction count can leave the users popover stuck on a spinner due to URL encoding (+ becoming a space). A PR was referenced as the fix path — read more.
A smaller-but-annoying Meta quirk: a user-reported 404 at the bottom of the “Testing Nested Replies on Meta” page saw markvanlan unable to reproduce (yet), with a note to keep an eye on recurrence (nested-replies) — read more. The ongoing testing thread itself continues to get activity (read more).
Mobile Chrome UX: Canapin reported two “back button” issues when the reactions list modal is open—the modal stays open, and navigation jumps to the page footer. A prior related report was cross-linked for comparison (mobilereactions) — read more. Related history: prior modal/reaction-list discussion posts (read more) and (read more).
Hosted plan questions: a thread on pricing structure / free plan feature availability clarified that the Free plan is still being tuned, only essential transactional emails are intended, and some UI/limits messaging may shift as Discourse tests market fit (free-planhostingprice-sensitive) — read more. Follow-up acknowledged changes around category types and promised to raise feature-matrix clarity with the team (read more).
Theme/component authoring: a user hit “Import Error: about.json does not exist” while uploading a theme component ZIP; replies suggested the ZIP’s folder structure (and OS zip behaviors) can accidentally nest about.json in a parent directory, breaking import — read more.
Accessibility: a new question asked for themes/components that work well with screen readers, given many a11y improvements now live in core (accessibility) — read more.
saquetim shipped an announcement introducing Simple Mode for documentation experiences in doc categories, focusing on a reading-first layout with collapsible discussions (doc-categories) — read more.
david weighed in on mobile/desktop mode switching, explaining why folding phones should intentionally render “desktop view” when unfolded—and noted the legacy viewport toggle is “long overdue” for removal, preferring direct fixes instead — read more.
HAWK addressed free plan / pricing structure concerns, clarifying current Free-plan constraints (transactional email only; “email in” was an oversight), and acknowledged ongoing iteration—including newly discovered category-type gating concerns — read more and read more.
sam confirmed the Chat “Back” + Starred report is specific to floating chat, and suggested the deeper issue is floating chat entangling browser history—an approach that may need rethinking — read more.
zogstrip connected two bug reports directly to fixes-in-flight: the Starred chat/back behavior should improve once a referenced PR lands — read more — and the “+1 reaction hover popover” encoding issue is covered by another PR — read more.
markvanlan followed up on a nested-replies testing page 404 report, noting it wasn’t reproducible at the time but might be a recurring edge case worth monitoring — read more.
featheredtoast updated self-hosters watching the official Docker image pipeline, saying the next build should be restored with a patch, enabling upgrades by pulling the latest image again — read more.
With docs going Simple Mode, folding phones demanding respect, and starred chats trying to remember where they came from, yesterday was basically “Discourse vs. navigation state”—in the best possible way.
Noted the native app isn’t store-published yet in read more
A quick theme across the day: approval workflows, mobile UX edge cases, and “agent-ready” distribution all got meaningful airtime—often with PRs or concrete repro steps attached (e.g. email template fix, audit log PR, and nested-replies investigations like this one).
Discourse argued that communities should prepare for agents reading on users’ behalf, and positioned Discourse as “agent-ready” in the companion thread: read more
#Announcements
“Simple mode” landed for doc categories, and early feedback/links began consolidating around how docs navigation should behave: read more
The ongoing rollout of nested-replies continued to spark implementation talk—especially around labels/translations and alternative solutions shared by Lilly: read more
A new report suggests the “Approve” button on a user profile can fail, tying into the long-running “phantom approval” notifications problem (related) and ongoing reproduction notes: read more
A subtle but impactful email-ops bug: “update available” emails linked to release notes without the v prefix; Lilly posted a template PR proposal in-thread: read more
Content localization edge case: when switching languages, the post link area still displayed the default language instead of translated content (translationcontent-localization): read more
Emoji autocomplete with special characters (like ü) got a likely fix via PR reference from renato (tagged fixed): read more
A self-host reliability win: backups failing with Postgres 18 were resolved by installing the Postgres package, with follow-up advice about pinning the right client bits for future upgrades: read more
A diagnostics thread asked why view counts don’t work on a specific topic; early triage suggested checking safe mode and clarifying what “doesn’t work” means: read more
A Discourse free-plan admin asked what “minimum required activity” means (and whether their embed implementation is correct) after receiving an inactivity warning email: read more
A reproducible iOS Chrome navigation bug report described the browser “back” button sometimes jumping to an older page rather than the expected prior view: read more
Audit trail gap: undeleting a post apparently does not create a log entry; ted opened a PR and linked it for staff review: read more
#Extras
The “Discourse Shortlink Router” project added a practical self-hosting/repurposing guide, turning a neat idea into something easier to adopt: read more
#Developer Guides
A dev install gotcha: the Docker dev setup can fall apart when your host UID isn’t 1000; dubwoc documented the failure mode and considered upstreaming docs/changes: read more
zogstrip confirmed a fix is coming for a “restore flagged post” usability issue, pointing to an upstream PR from the report thread: read more
They also linked a proposed fix for Googlebot pagination/crawl issues in an older SEO support thread: read more
And they noted an upcoming improvement to a site-setting description (linking to Watched Words) in UX: read more
Plus, they tried (and couldn’t) reproduce the “fullscreen reactions on mobile” issue, asking for repro steps if it reappears: read more
renato referenced a PR that should fix emoji autocomplete with special characters (example: ü), marking quick progress on a small but important editor polish item: read more
rishabh followed up on hosted plan UX: the “Starter upgrade” recommendation logic can skip incorrectly to Pro, and they flagged it internally as a real bug (with a promise of an update): read more
techAPJ clarified how Solved Reminders pull suggested topics—confirming that “Limit suggested to category” should keep “help answer similar questions” suggestions within the same category: read more
HAWK continued an Enterprise-scale community discussion by drilling into an important nuance: are “early stages” about first launch, or migrating an already-existing community ecosystem?: read more
supermathie asked for key context (“What was the reason given for the flag?”) to unblock a Chinese-language support question about missing approval actions: read more
If yesterday was any indication, today’s going to be a great day to keep your nested replies tidy, your approval buttons functional, and your forums ready for the agents who never sleep.
Discourse’s “agent-ready” positioning sparked a pointed discussion about whether communities should allow AI crawlers at all, with eisammy questioning the commercial upside (read more), awesomerobot outlining how the answer depends on whether your forum is primarily support vs social (read more), Orioni adding nuance around the still-unproven impact of llms.txt (read more), and darkpixlz arguing for actively blocking scrapers (read more).
Copy/paste of syntax highlighting (notably diff) turned into a deep dive into clipboard formats: supermathie demonstrated how Discourse’s copy button differs from selecting rendered HTML in the browser (read more), and the thread ultimately narrowed the issue to Firefox’s behavior (with a Bugzilla report) rather than Discourse itself (read more; read more).
A new iOS PWA regression report: the Reply button disappears in the composer when text size is set smaller (works in Safari, fails in the PWA), on Foundation theme (read more).
“Update available” email templates had an invalid release-notes link; Lilly confirmed the fixing PR was merged and should land on the next update cycle (read more).
Admin approval flow got two separate spotlights: one thread investigated why the approval button on a user profile doesn’t work and dug into reviewable logic (read more; read more), while another continued a long-running bug where notifications claim users need approval but the review queue doesn’t show them—workarounds included exporting /admin/users to find approved = false accounts (read more; read more). Background/repro echoes also resurfaced around ID collisions and older approval artifacts (read more; read more).
A reactions-related backend error hit latest.1: NameError: uninitialized constant ReactionsSerializerHelpers when loading topic posts; Ethsim2 provided logs and followed up with a PR to move/load the helper earlier in the serialization path (read more; read more).
A duplicate report reiterated that [spoiler] toggles break when nested inside [details] (can’t re-blur on second click). The new topic asked to be closed as a duplicate of the canonical issue (read more; original: read more).
A quick “what happened?” bug report described seeing an error after “update all”, then returning to the forum via browser back—opening in a new tab worked; Falco immediately pointed the reporter to check /logs for details (read more; read more).
Foundation theme users reported the homepage font suddenly appearing too small after rebuilding/updating, and troubleshooting pointed toward Modernize Foundation and recent theme changes; Lilly shared a CSS mitigation and confirmed toggling the “upcoming changes” modernize option could reproduce/fix the issue (read more; read more).
A nested replies usability snag: in threaded view, admins can’t add a note to an action log entry because the composer button is missing—while it is available in flat view (read more).
Two related “clarity and least-privilege” UX/policy threads focused on deletion behavior: one proposed splitting delete all posts and topics allowed groups into separate own-content vs global-content permissions (read more), and another suggested clearer wording for delete_removed_posts_after to better explain the “removed vs permanently deleted later” lifecycle (read more).
Free-tier expectations were clarified: Discourse-hosted free sites are expected to show at least a couple users and a handful of topics in the first 3 weeks, with escalating inactivity notices after that (read more).
A support question on missing Likes turned into a “plugin interaction gotcha”: in categories with Topic Voting enabled, Likes are automatically disabled; the fix was to re-enable via CSS/component approach, and the solution included pointers back to the official voting plugin behavior (read more; plugin reference: read more; user-confirmed fix: read more).
A thoughtful cross-cultural + generational feedback thread asked for an admin-selectable default reply order (old→new vs new→old), emphasizing discoverability issues for older users and differing reading habits—especially among Japanese users used to “newest first” layouts (read more).
Moderation permissions and conflict-of-interest: a site owner asked whether category moderators can review flags on their own posts, and whether Discourse provides any technical enforcement (vs policy) to avoid self-review; discussion included comparing category-moderator powers to TL4/Leader as a least-privilege alternative (read more; follow-up nuance: read more).
A localized UX/support bug report suggested Chrome “back button” behavior differs when the UI language is Chinese vs English; the accepted solution indicates this may have been a translation/context misunderstanding (“topic” vs “theme”) plus locale-specific behavior (read more; read more).
#Plugin
The official Discourse Calendar (and Event) plugin thread got fresh UX feedback: users want to click through directly to the topic (skipping the event preview modal) or have participation buttons available within the preview for better conversion (read more; response pointing to Contribute > UXread more).
awesomerobot engaged in the AI crawler debate on the “agent-ready” blog post, explaining how the “right” approach differs for support forums (optimize for fast answers) versus social communities (optimize for on-site interaction), and also noted the practical limits of blocking scrapers purely via robots.txt (read more; read more). awesomerobot also clarified Discourse’s current free-tier inactivity expectations and timelines for decommissioning (read more).
supermathie delivered a high-signal technical breakdown on why syntax highlighting colors don’t reliably survive copy/paste—demonstrating clipboard MIME differences, inlining behavior differences across browsers, and providing a debugging script to inspect clipboard HTML (read more; read more; read more). supermathie also solved a “missing Like button” report by identifying the Topic Voting plugin interaction that suppresses Likes in voting categories (read more).
Falco responded to a post-update error report by directing the reporter to check /logs, keeping the troubleshooting grounded in actionable diagnostics (read more).
If yesterday taught us anything, it’s that your forum can be “agent-ready,” but your Reply button still needs to be visible—and your diff blocks deserve to keep their colors when they escape into the wild.
— users asked for a better symbol (or theme/CSS approach) — 