Daily Summary (1pm UTC)

News and Events Forum summaries
888

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

Over the past 24 hours, the community generated 120 new posts across 52 topics, and received 224 likes.

Top User Posts Likes
Lindsey 2 28
Moin 10 21
Pmusaraj 7 15
Chapoi 11 14
Awesomerobot 4 14
Oniel 1 14
Akanora 6 12
Merefield 5 12
Darkpixlz 4 10
One1 8 9

Interesting Topics

#Announcements

  • Lindsey revealed the new Workflows feature — a visual automation builder with triggers, conditions, actions, and utilities, available on Business and Enterprise plans. Awesomerobot confirmed it will eventually replace the Automations plugin, while RGJ shared positive hands‑on experience after four weeks of use. read more

  • Rishabh announced the new login‑via‑email‑code flow, a passwordless alternative that stays on the same page. Dfabulich discussed the benefits of nudging users toward passkeys, while Don requested the ability to change the display name during registration. Pmusaraj explained how this approach avoids in‑app browser pitfalls. read more

  • The redesigned admin dashboard (from #better‑insights) continues to generate discussion. One1 objected to the removal of version info from the main dashboard, prompting a conversation with Chapoi and Mcwumbly about future customisability. Ed_S reminded the team not to forget the “Morlocks” who run the system. read more

  • GIFs are moving to Discourse core — Martin clarified the migration approach for hosted customers, while Lilly pointed out that the free Giphy API still works well for self‑hosters. read more

#Theme

  • Oniel released Oniel’s Flat Theme, a modern, responsive theme focused on clarity and dense information. Pmusaraj praised the sharp look and suggested adding more mobile screenshots. read more

#Self‑hosting

bug

  • Akanora found that the avatar selector modal crashes with t.split is not a function when “selectable avatars” is enabled but empty. Pmusaraj traced the cause and submitted a pull request to handle the edge case gracefully. read more

  • Overgrow identified a bug in the AI bot: clicking “Retry” in public topics creates a duplicate reply instead of regenerating. The root cause is that the non‑streaming path ignores the existing_reply_post parameter. read more

#Plugin

Support

ux

#Feature

Activity by the Team Group

Team members were highly active across multiple areas. Pmusaraj provided debugging help on the avatar selector crash, explained the benefits of email‑code login, praised the new Flat Theme, and weighed in on Discourse ID goals. Chapoi responded to feedback on the dashboard redesign, suggested a migration fix, fixed the bookmark time‑picker layout, resolved a drag‑and‑drop issue in custom sidebar sections, improved the “First Reaction” badge description, approved a feature for deleting pending posts, and tagged Renato on the iOS composer bug. Awesomerobot announced that Workflows will replace Automations, fixed the bookmark time‑picker, and shared thoughts on AI‑content detection. Lindsey kicked off the Workflows preview and authored the official documentation. Martin clarified the GIFs migration strategy and addressed a logging error in the upcoming‑changes problem check. Mcwumbly supported the group‑exclusion filter request and discussed future customisability of the admin dashboard. David helped a user clear the theme cache after a broken upgrade. Tobiaseigen promoted an online community‑building workshop and revisited the status of bootstrap mode.

:tada: With a brand new Workflows feature, a fresh flat theme, and robot‑like precision in squashing bugs, yesterday showed that Discourse is still the most community‑driven platform around—puppies everywhere are wagging their tails in approval!

889

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the meta community has been buzzing with 125 new posts, spread across 48 new topics, and 183 likes were given to the posts returned.

Top Users by Likes & Posts:

Interesting Topics

#Feature: Make PDF previews actually readable

Canapin opened a feature request to improve the readability of inline PDF previews, noting that the default size is too small and that toggling options is cumbersome. Moin pointed to a recent fix for PDF download behaviour, but Canapin clarified the core desire remains a fullscreen toggle. David confirmed that the fixing PR has now been merged. This topic also sparked further discussion on the Inline PDF Previews theme component where users reported new admin notices.

#Announcements: Introducing the admin category management page

Martin announced a new admin category management page (/admin/config/category-management) that displays all categories with type, visibility, and quick settings. Users Gormus requested drag-and-drop sorting and a “create category” button directly from the page. Moin noted that subcategories can also be added via the sidebar.

#Self-hosting: After the update, there was an error and the forum is not functioning properly

Yuki_Sui reported critical post-update errors involving missing migrations (e.g., external_plugin_imports and source column). NateDhaliwal and Chapoi advised a rebuild or manual migration run (./launcher run app bundle exec rake db:migrate). The user confirmed that the combined suggestions resolved the issue.

Support What theme does the discourse official community use?

Hsin_Dr asked about the theme powering meta.discourse.org. Darkpixlz explained it is a private “Meta Branded” theme, not public, and directed the user to browse Customization > Theme for alternatives.

#Plugin: Discourse Chat Bridge (Telegram)

Dr460nf1r3 forked and fixed the Telegram bridge plugin, and after Merefield’s suggestion, subsequently opened a PR to the main repo.

#Blog: Introducing the Discourse Free Plan

A blog post by System announced the new Discourse Free Plan – $0 with unlimited members, chat, and frictionless experience. Generated community discussion.

#Announcements: Better insights into your community with the redesigned admin dashboard

The ongoing dashboard redesign discussion continued with Ed_S and One1 arguing that critical system information (like version) should remain front and centre, not hidden behind an extra click. Chapoi defended the new dedicated page, and Ed_S suggested a future preference option for sysadmin vs. community manager landing pages.

#Bug: The popup menu for quoting text is unresponsive on Android

Merefield’s bug report caught attention from Tannerabread, who suspects their iOS fix may have caused a regression on Android. Tannerabread is investigating and a patch was already merged for a related iOS freeze issue.

#Bug: AI bot “Retry” creates a duplicate reply instead of regenerating, in public (non-PM) topics

Overgrow filed a detailed report identifying that the AI Bot’s “Retry” action in public topics appends a new post instead of regenerating the original, due to a missing existing_reply_post handling in the non-streaming branch. Falco submitted a fix.

#Theme component: Topic List Previews (TLP)

Merefield announced optimisations for TLP, removing the imagesLoaded library and fixing background colour jank. The sidecar plugin has moved to a private repo for sponsors (≥$7/month).

#Feature: Allow to exclude groups in /filter

Mcwumbly supported a feature request to exclude groups in the /filter interface. Awesomerobot confirmed work is underway and linked to a PR.

#Community Building: Anyone else seeing a drastic drop in community activity for Support forums?

In a discussion about declining support forum activity, Nicolsdennis suggested leveraging AI bots for initial triage, while Don proposed making forums login-only to protect content from AI scrapers and foster exclusive spaces.

#SSO: Connect User logins from my Wix site for my Discourse forum

Gid sought help integrating Wix member logins with Discourse SSO, but was on the free plan which only supports Discourse ID. Moin and Pfaffman explained the plan limitations and that Wix SSO requires an enterprise solution. Gid later asked about self-hosting, and Moin provided a detailed overview of costs, benefits, and technical requirements.

Support Has something changed with pasting html into the composer?

One1 reported that pasting text from certain websites now includes unwanted <span lang="..."> tags. Renato explained that a recent change had been made, and they would investigate further. This also led to a separate follow-up from One1 and Delightful asking how to customise paste handling for their scripture forum.

#Development: Deprecating .js.es6 and .hbs file extensions in themes and plugins

David updated two announcements that .js.es6 and .hbs files will trigger admin warnings now, with support being removed during the 2026.8.0-latest cycle.

Activity by the Team Group

The Discourse team has been highly active, addressing bugs, merging features, and providing support:

As yesterday drew to a close, we learned that even AI bots can accidentally create a flood of duplicate replies, reminding us that sometimes the best way to move forward is to regenerate, not repeat. Happy community building! :paw_prints:

890

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, 107 new posts were created across 43 new topics, sparking lively debate and collaboration. The community awarded 187 likes across these contributions.

Top contributors by likes and posts:

Interesting Topics

Community Building

Anyone else seeing a drastic drop in community activity for Support forums?
The conversation continued with Nicolsdennis suggesting an active digital support agent, Don proposing login‑gating to block AI scrapers, and Awesomerobot cautioning that gating could hurt SEO and AI influence. Don later shared his experiment with AI‑friendly llms.txt files, Merefield argued that forums remain places for “trust, shared experience, and community,” and HAWK recommended re‑framing success metrics to measure reach rather than raw sign‑ups. A deep debate on the future of forum discoverability. read more

#self-hosting

Confused about Self Hosting
Newcomer Gid asked for clarification on VPS, managed hosting, and SSH requirements. Andrew_Rowe gave a thorough walkthrough of self‑hosting basics, Lilly explained the difference between Discourse‑hosted and self‑hosted plans, Darkpixlz advocated for running Discourse on personal hardware, and NateDhaliwal, Itsbhanusharma, and Ed_S discussed the security trade‑offs of port forwarding vs. Cloudflare Tunnels. A helpful primer for rookie admins. read more

#announcements

Introducing the admin category management page
Gormus praised the new overview page and requested drag‑and‑drop reordering and a “create new category” button directly from the page. Martin confirmed the button would be easy to add and promised to consider ordering. The PR is on GitHub. read more

Solved badges are now enabled by default for new communities
Lindsey announced that the four Solved badges are now enabled by default for new sites, with an opt‑in for existing communities via the Upcoming Changes panel. Bruce5051 and Ganncamp asked whether existing solutions would be backfilled—Davidb confirmed a daily badge grant job handles that. read more

Better insights into your community with the redesigned admin dashboard
One1 expressed frustration that critical version‑update info is now an extra click away. Chapoi acknowledged the feedback but said the change won’t be reversed immediately, and Ed_S suggested offering a preference to choose between sysadmin and community manager landing pages. read more

Small post actions no longer tracked or watched
Michelle_L asked if small actions still appear in engagement queries—Sam confirmed the data remains in the DB. Moin noted a possible interaction with “consider topics unread when closed” preference, and Zogstrip is working on a fix for an over‑reaching PR. read more

GIFs are moving to Discourse core!
Davidb addressed attribution concerns, adding the required Tenor attribution and removing a confusing option, while Martin promised a clearer warning for users. The PRs are now live. read more

sso

Connect User logins from my Wix site for my Discourse forum
NateDhaliwal pointed to affordable VPS options like Contabo, Pfaffman noted that Wix’s own pricing can be steep, and Lilly advised that complaining about Discourse hosting costs won’t yield exceptions—the software itself is free and open source. read more

ux

UX: Fix padding of pm small action in mobile view of horizon theme
Small-Lovely-Cat reported and submitted a CSS fix for a padding misalignment that hid the “x month later” label in PMs on mobile. Nat roped in designers, and Chapoi merged the PR. read more

#feature

Allow to exclude groups in /filter
Awesomerobot announced that the feature to exclude groups from topic filters has been merged and will be available in the next update. Andresfromsonar thanked the team for the quick turnaround. read more

Support

Select font while creating a topic
Sorokin asked about choosing fonts in the composer. Darkpixlz provided a theme‑component CSS snippet for wrapping text in custom fonts, and explained how to build a dropdown menu using JavaScript. read more

Has something changed with pasting html into the composer?
One1 noticed that <span lang="..."> tags now appear when pasting text. Zogstrip asked for the source, Renato investigated and merged an improvement to strip Word‑style spans, though lang attributes are being treated as valid inline HTML. read more

#theme-component

Inline PDF Previews
Multiple posts discussed a deprecation warning and a fix: Tobiaseigen noted the admin notice and temporarily disabled the component, Zogstrip merged a PR to resolve the issue, and Shortmort37 shared a personal fork that adds PDF.js rendering and mobile support. read more

bug

Unable to activate account on try.discourse.org using email+password credentials
Per1234 reported that account activation emails weren’t being sent because outgoing mail was disabled for non‑staff. HAWK fixed the daily restore and re‑enabled mail. read more

3 rejects HTTP 202 breaking IMDB oneboxes
Dax identified that IMDB now returns HTTP 202 (Accepted) instead of 200, causing onebox failures. After investigation, Zogstrip determined that IMDB is behind a WAF that blocks scraping, so a PR improves the error message instead. read more

Activity by the Team Group

The Discourse team was highly active yesterday, contributing to numerous discussions and fixes:

  • Awesomerobot joined the community activity debate, warning against gating content for SEO/AI reasons (read more), and announced the merge of the “exclude groups in /filter” feature (read more).
  • Zogstrip fixed the PDF previews deprecation (read more), investigated the HTML paste issue (read more), made the upcoming‑events block respect subcategory filters (read more), addressed the small‑actions tracking regression (read more), fixed the vote limits notification bug (read more), the S3 multipart backup upload bug (read more), and the affiliate link rewriting gap (read more), as well as improving the IMDB onebox error message (read more).
  • Lindsey announced the Solved badges default enablement and answered backfill questions (read more).
  • Martin confirmed the category management page improvements (read more), fixed the upcoming changes problem check (read more), and implemented granular group permissions for theme components (read more).
  • Chapoi approved the padding fix for PMs on mobile (read more) and responded to feedback on the admin dashboard redesign (read more).
  • Nat helped with the custom sidebar links question (read more) and improved the manual localization UI (read more).
  • Renato investigated the HTML paste regression (read more) and fixed the missing image in chat review queue (read more).
  • Davidb handled attribution for GIFs in core (read more) and confirmed the backfill for Solved badges (read more), as well as the simpler email subject lines fix (read more).
  • Sam confirmed that small‑action data remains in the database for queries (read more).
  • HAWK offered strategic advice on measuring community ROI in the drop‑in‑activity thread (read more) and fixed the try.discourse.org email issue (read more), and also shared interest in an upcoming community workshop (read more).

With all that voting, gating, and font‑pasting, it seems like even Discourse needs a coffee‑shop break—maybe next time Don will bring his own plugin to brew it!

891

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

Interesting Topics

#Self-hosting

  • Andrew_Rowe, Lilly, Darkpixlz, and others helped a confused new admin understand the differences between self‑hosting, managed hosting, and Discourse’s own plans. Lilly gave a thorough breakdown of SSH, VPS, and the real costs of running your own server, while Darkpixlz shared tips on hardware self‑hosting and security. Read the full discussion.

#Community Building

  • HAWK and Don debated the impact of AI on support forums and how to reframe success metrics. Don proposed making “Library” content discoverable while gating the “Coffee Shop” experience behind registration. See the conversation.

  • Don started a playful thread asking admins what advice they’d send back to their beginner selves. Jagster (translated) recommended the KISS principle, and Ban2zai shared his journey of over‑engineering plugins. Join in.

#Announcements

  • Keegan announced the redesigned invite modal for members and admins, now available as an upcoming change. The new flow offers a single‑step admin invite with automatic moderator status. Details here.

  • Zogstrip confirmed that a recent PR went too far in removing small post action tracking and is working on a fix in PR #41760. Topic link.

  • Martin implemented granular group‑based permissions for the anonymous/user login feature, and updated Lilly’s group sidebar menus component. See the PRs.

  • Lindsey announced that Topic Voting badges are now enabled by default for new communities, with an upcoming change for existing sites. Learn more.

Support

  • Jonathan5 asked how to ensure Discourse rebuild continues after a terminal session disconnects. Pfaffman and Merefield recommended tmux, and NateDhaliwal shared his blog guide. Check the tips.

  • Boubou wanted custom sidebar links; Nat and Lilly provided instructions for adding custom sections and using the group sidebar menus theme component. Resolved.

  • Mcdanlj reported that the real IP from a reverse proxy is no longer recognized after a recent Discourse change. Pfaffman and Chapoi pointed to the new set_real_ip_from approach and a helpful meta thread. Fix details.

  • One1 reported that quoted text breaks due to curly quote conversion in the DuckDuckGo browser. Chapoi confirmed it’s a browser‑level autocorrect issue, and Moin linked a similar report. Workaround.

ux

#Hosted Customers

  • Falco introduced CDCK/MoM, the new built‑in LLM for hosted sites, which routes requests to a mixture of open‑weight models (Qwen 3.6, DeepSeek 4 Flash) on Discourse’s own infrastructure. Full explanation.

#Plugin

  • Falco also announced major updates to the Resenha plugin, adding optional SFU support via LiveKit, device pickers, and room mentionability. See the update.

#Feature

  • Spacebom shared a new AGPL plugin that allows adding noindex to entire categories and their topics. Download from GitHub.

  • Fb.Xisi requested per‑category configuration of the “accept all solutions” groups. Mcwumbly asked for more context on the use case. Discuss.

General

  • FinIce and Falco compared the largest Discourse topics, with Falco pointing to a 71k‑post thread on the Straight Dope boards. Fun read.

bug

  • AkarinLiu reported that Discourse stops responding after integrating the DeepSeek API. Falco clarified that only Google AI Studio is currently supported for embeddings, not Vertex AI. Troubleshooting.

  • Ethsim2 found a regression where the default composition mode (set to Markdown) is ignored between two recent Discourse builds. Moin suggested checking browser‑stored preferences. Report.

  • Jagster noticed “Invalid version list” warnings for several themes. Elmuerte explained the .discourse-compatibility file, and David contributed a PR to suppress warnings for comment‑only files. Resolution.

Activity by the Team Group

With 46 topics and 126 posts, the community kept busy—even if some had to wrestle with curly quotes, smart divs, and the eternal question of whether to self‑host or let Discourse do the heavy lifting.

892

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

The past 24 hours have been bustling on meta.discourse.org with 92 new posts spread across 40 new topics, earning 134 likes in total.

The top contributors by likes and posts were:

Interesting Topics

#Community Building

Message from the future – A wonderfully imaginative topic started by Don asked: “If you could send a single message back to your time‑traveling self on the day you first logged into your Discourse dashboard, what would it be?” The thread quickly grew popular with 39 likes. Jagster (channeling a KISS philosophy) advised adding features only when needed, NateDhaliwal confessed “Read the documentation, Nate! Seriously.”, and Canapin playfully warned about future summer heatwaves and generative AI. Bruce5051 recommended hiring an expert. Read more →

#Self-hosting

Confused about Self Hosting – A long‑running discussion where Gid received thorough advice on VPS options and Docker installs. Lilly shared screenshots contrasting Hetzner with cheaper providers like Ionos, Traceymoko endorsed the 30‑minute official guide, and RGJ clarified that managed hosting providers (like Discourse.org and Communiteq) handle maintenance without sacrificing data ownership. Andrew_Rowe pointed out a 50% nonprofit discount. Read more →

#Self-hosting

Installing Discourse on a self hosted VPS. A process with FAQs – Gid, now committed to self‑hosting, opened a detailed step‑by‑step topic outlining every decision from VPS provider (Contabo vs Hetzner) to SMTP, DNS, and SSH keys. Darkpixlz, Lilly, and NateDhaliwal chimed in with practical warnings: stick to the beginner install guide, use a subdomain, and don’t overthink SSO yet. Lilly also gently corrected the use of Mentions. Read more →

#Self-hosting

Invalid version list in discourse themes – Jagster noticed logs full of “Invalid version list” warnings for several themes. Elmuerte explained that an empty .discourse-compatibility file causes the warning; it is usually harmless if the theme works. David then noted that Discourse now prefers the d-compat/* branch strategy and is suppressing warnings for comment‑only files. Read more →

#Announcements

Improving admin invites – The Discourse team shared a new admin‑invite flow that immediately grants moderator status on signup to speed up onboarding. Ondrej suggested adding a moderator invite option and provided a mockup. Rishabh explained the design goal, Awesomerobot liked the mockup and proposed adding an educational tooltip, and Mcwumbly agreed. Read more →

#Announcements

Granular group‑based permissions for anonymous and logged in users – Martin contributed a PR implementing disallowed_groups for the anonymous theme component, building on earlier work. Lilly thanked him and noted the improvement for targeting specific groups. The feature is moving toward per‑category granularity. Read more →

#Feature

data‑theme‑toc=“true” should be placed at the top of a post in its own paragraph – One1 reported that when a user inserts the <div data-theme-toc="true"> code, subsequent text is not parsed correctly unless there is a blank line after the div. He proposed that the composer’s “+” button should insert the code at the very top of the post with an automatic blank line. Chapoi moved the suggestion to the feature category and agreed it would be a nice quality‑of‑life improvement. Read more →

#Feature

Configure “Accept all solutions allowed groups” per category – Fb.Xisi requested that the “Accept all solutions” setting be configurable per category, rather than only globally. Mcwumbly supported the idea, noting that the product is moving toward more per‑category settings, but cautioned about complexity and the need for global overrides. Read more →

#Theme component

Desktop to Mobile View Banner – Roi reported a deprecation notice for the .hbs extension after updating Discourse. David pointed out that Discourse no longer has separate desktop/mobile views, so the component is obsolete. Don marked it as end-of-life. Read more →

#Theme component

Change share icon by OS – Roi thanked Don for fixing a deprecation issue that had been causing a console warning. The component now works cleanly again. Read more →

#Developer Guides

Pinning plugin and theme versions for older Discourse installs (d‑compat branches) – Elmuerte asked for clarification on the branch‑based compatibility strategy: when a plugin supports multiple Discourse versions, does the system fall back to main if no specific branch exists? David confirmed yes, and that the workflow can be automated with the provided skeleton. Read more →

Support

Text after div tags does not get rendered properly – One1 discovered that markdown following a <div> is not rendered unless a blank line separates them. Chapoi explained it is standard CommonMark behaviour (HTML block type 6). The root cause was a user inserting the ToC div without a trailing blank line, leading to the feature request above. Read more →

bug

FIX: Boosts can be flagged by multiple users – Small-Lovely-Cat submitted a PR to the discourse-boosts plugin that removes a check preventing the same boost from being flagged by more than one user. Previously, a user trying to flag an already flagged boost would see a confusing “You have already flagged this boost” error. Read more →

bug

FIX: Prevent resurrection of approved queued reviewables when reusing flagged reviewables for the same target – Also by Small-Lovely-Cat, this patch prevents a seemingly approved topic from being resurrected in the review queue when a new flag is filed on the same post. Without the fix, the prior “approved” reviewable would switch back to “pending”, creating two contradictory queue entries. Read more →

bug

Deleted posts still show full content when translation is enabled – Asa flagged a privacy issue: when a post is deleted by its author, the full translated text remains visible to anyone viewing the topic with the translation feature (Discourse AI) active. Only after switching back to the original language does the “post deleted by author” placeholder appear. This could be a serious data‑leak vector. Read more →

Activity by the Team Group

Yesterday’s activity saw a delightful time‑travel advice thread where users imagined sending messages to their past selves, proving that even in the future we still need reminders to read the documentation. :rocket:

893

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

Over the past 24 hours, the community produced 46 new posts across 27 new topics, with 38 likes given. The most engaged users were:

Interesting Topics

#Self-hosting

  • Lilly provided a step‑by‑step walkthrough for Gid on installing Discourse on a VPS, covering domain selection, SMTP via Hostinger, and the pitfalls of rushing into SSO integration. NateDhaliwal and Ed_S chimed in with advice on VPS sizing and the critical need for off‑site backups. Read more

#Theme component

  • The Desktop to Mobile View Banner component was marked end-of-life by David after Discourse deprecated separate mobile views; Don confirmed the decision. Roi promptly removed it from his site. Read more

  • Don fixed a bug in the Change share icon by OS component, and Roi confirmed the deprecation notification vanished. Read more

  • Optional Mobile Title Header received a deprecation notice, which David addressed with a pull request. Read more

  • Lilly pushed updates to the Group Sidebar Menus component following core changes for granular group permissions. Read more

  • Nathank reported an enhancement for subcategory config in Right Sidebar Blocks, which Zogstrip fixed. Read more

  • Several other theme components – Clickable Social Icon Links and Show Both OP and Last Reply on Mobile – showed deprecation warnings, with users like Roi asking maintainers for updates. Read more and more

bug

  • Asa discovered a privacy issue: deleted posts still appear in full when translation (Discourse AI) is enabled, because the cached translation ignores the deletion state. Steps to reproduce were provided. Read more

  • Small-Lovely-Cat submitted a fix for the Boosts plugin, preventing confusing “already flagged” errors by allowing multiple users to flag a boost. Read more

  • Jagster reported that numerical tags (e.g., year “2026”) fail when a tag with the same ID already exists, causing unexpected tag selection. Read more

  • A Chinese‑language topic described how certain punctuation breaks Markdown bold rendering; Renato explained this is expected behavior. Read more

Support

  • A user on the Free Plan (User486) reported being unable to disable read‑only mode, with the button reverting on reload. Darkpixlz suggested the site may have been flagged for inactivity or ToS violations. Read more

  • After an upgrade, Uckelman encountered 500 errors caused by an invalid IP‑address format when using Caddy as a reverse‑proxy. The solution was adding header_up X-Real-IP. Read more

  • Lou investigated the Notify about queued posts after setting and found that category moderators are not notified, only site moderators. Read more

#Plugin

  • Resenha – Nicolsdennis welcomed the addition of LiveKit SFU support, allowing him to retire his custom fork, and asked about accepting PRs. Read more

  • Allow PM to Staff – after a temporary break, Roi confirmed the plugin is working again thanks to a recent fix. Read more

  • Turn Based Board Game – Fearlessfrog released v0.4 with rebalanced reinforcement and opening deployment rules, advising players to finish existing games before updating. Read more

development

  • Philh explored API access to authoring‑limit site settings and discovered that /site/settings.json and /site.json require admin‑level keys; RGJ clarified that certain settings are available to regular users and that granular scopes for these endpoints do not yet exist. Read more

#Announcements

  • The Granular group‑based permissions feature received a PR from Martin to add disallowed_groups support, which Lilly praised for its utility. Read more

  • The Easier account signup using email codes feature drew feedback from DomMcD, who noted it removes the name and username fields from the signup page, forcing users to set a username manually later. Read more

#Theme

  • Oniel shared his Flat Theme, receiving positive comments from SeizalHong who suggested improving readability on small screens. Oniel promised mobile improvements. Read more

Activity by the Team Group

  • David marked the Desktop to Mobile View Banner component as end-of-life after confirming it is no longer necessary, and fixed a deprecation notice in the Optional Mobile Title Header component. Read more and more

  • Don confirmed the end‑of‑life status for the mobile view banner and fixed a bug in the Change share icon by OS component. Read more and more

  • Sam reassured the community that Nat is reworking the AI caption subsystem and will add toggles to rebake captions, addressing the long‑standing request in the Quick welfare check on the AI caption bot topic. Read more

Yesterday’s flurry of deprecation notices and component fixes proved that even the most polished themes need a little maintenance now and then—but the community’s quick responses kept the wheels turning smoothly.

894

Today on meta.discourse.org…

A summary of the last 24 hours of activity on the Discourse meta forum.

Key Stats

  • New Posts: 50
  • New Topics: 22
  • Total Likes: 65

Top Users by Posts & Likes

User Posts Likes
Moin 6 14
Lilly 3 6
Don 2 6
Ed_S 2 6
Angus 2 3
Chapoi 2 3
Thadeus 2 3
Uckelman 2 3
Martin 2 2
NateDhaliwal 2 2

Interesting Topics

#Self-hosting

  • Installing Discourse on a self hosted VPS. A process with FAQs – Ed_S stressed the importance of regular, off-site backups for self-hosters, noting that hosting providers care little about your data. NateDhaliwal asked about snapshot frequency, and Ed_S argued that backups every two days with four retained is a reasonable balance. read more

#Announcements

  • Granular group-based permissions for anonymous and logged in users – Martin confirmed that the disallowed_groups setting has been merged and now works properly. Lilly encountered an issue where the anonymous_users group still appeared despite using disallowed_groups: "0|4" — Moin later clarified that the change had been temporarily disabled on test forums, and after re-enabling it worked as expected. read more

Marketplace

  • [RFP] Discourse UX Overhaul, Theme Customization & Plugin Audit – Thadeus posted a detailed request for proposals, seeking an experienced developer to revamp their forum’s UX, clean up categories, audit plugins, and improve the composer. Chapoi suggested enabling Rich Text Mode as an alternative to the default preview, while Merefield pointed to Nested Replies for better navigation. Several community members responded, including Pacharanero and Jahan_Gagan who sent private proposals. read more

  • Development Online Platform – Numun provided an update, asking interested parties to email proposals by 24 July 2026, with a decision expected next week. read more

Support

  • Are email notifications sent out for unlisted topics? – Richie asked whether Mentions in unlisted topics trigger emails. Moin confirmed that unlisting does not suppress notifications; mentions, quotes, and watching settings still send them, so a private category is needed for full silence. read more

  • Is there a simple way to not strip leading spaces and other formatting in a poem? – Pinetree1111 sought a user-friendly method to preserve spacing in poetry. Lilly suggested using &nbsp; HTML entities, Chapoi demonstrated backtick formatting with custom CSS, and Rdweb proposed the <pre> tag. The consensus leans toward the backtick approach as the simplest teachable method. read more

  • 500 Oops errors after upgrading – Uckelman encountered PG::InvalidTextRepresentation errors after an upgrade, traced to a missing X-Real-IP header when using Caddy reverse proxy. Adding header_up X-Real-IP {remote_host} to the Caddyfile resolved it. read more

bug

  • FIX: Boosts can’t be flagged by multiple users – Small-Lovely-Cat fixed a bug where boosts could not be flagged by more than one user. J.Jaffeux pointed out a title typo (“can” vs “can’t”), which was corrected. Zogstrip reviewed and merged the PR. read more

  • Why do numerical tags fail when ID exists – Jagster reported that creating a numerical tag (e.g. 2013) incorrectly resolves to another tag’s ID. Tannerabread explained the canonical URL format (/tag/:slug/:id) and Mcwumbly argued that /tag/:foo should always treat :foo as a slug, using the ID form for disambiguation. read more

#Community Building

  • How I Revamped Our Forum’s Visitor Flow – Don shared a custom solution for age-restricted forums that avoids the built-in “Login Required” setting (which blocks search engine crawlers). Instead, a topic preview card appears above the login form, giving visitors a teaser and redirecting them to the specific topic after login, dramatically reducing bounce rates. read more

#Site feedback

  • Quick welfare check on the AI caption bot – NateDhaliwal noted that rebaking oneboxes doesn’t refresh AI captions. Sam confirmed that Nat is reworking the subsystem and a toggle for rebaking captions will be added. Nat closed the topic as resolved. read more

  • Broken avatars in quotes within translated posts – Moin reported that while broken avatars in translated quotes appear fixed in one topic, many other topics still exhibit the issue, and asked for a bulk fix. No staff response yet. read more

wordpress

  • WP Discourse is auto publishing old posts when performing bulk updates with the TaxoPress Plugin – Loukas_Stamellos described old (14-year) posts being auto-published to Discourse when tags are bulk-updated via TaxoPress. Angus suggested temporarily disabling Auto Publish during bulk operations, noting that the plugin’s automatic nature makes it tricky to prevent. read more

#Theme component

  • Watermark Image – Moin notified component author Arkshine that the everyone group default in settings will be removed soon due to core changes, and a migration to anonymous_users may not be appropriate for this use case. read more

  • Be the first to reply – Don shared a CSS animation for the “first replier” component that fades like a battery indicator, matching his forum’s theme. read more

Activity by the Team Group

  • Sam – chimed in on the AI caption bot topic, announcing that Nat is reworking the subsystem and that a toggle for rebaking captions will be provided. see topic
  • Nat – closed the AI caption bot topic as resolved after the rework. see topic
  • Martin – provided key updates on the granular group-based permissions feature, confirming the disallowed_groups merge and debugging Lilly's component issue. Later, he clarified that a recent GitHub issue caused a delay in the update reaching latest. see topic 1 see topic 2
  • Lilly – asked for help configuring disallowed_groups in her theme component, and also helped a user by explaining how to use &nbsp; for preserving spaces in poetry. see topic 1 see topic 2
  • Moin – was the most active team member, providing authoritative answers on unlisted topics (confirming notifications are sent), debugging Lilly’s group permission issue, notifying component authors about the everyone group removal, and noting broken avatars in translated posts. He also commented on the larger “Email me” link in the new signup flow. see topic 1 see topic 2 see topic 3 see topic 4 see topic 5
  • Zogstrip – reviewed and merged the “Boosts can’t be flagged by multiple users” fix. see topic
  • J.Jaffeux – pointed out the title typo in the boosts fix topic. see topic
  • Angus – assisted with the WP Discourse auto-publishing issue, explaining the design constraints and recommending disabling Auto Publish during bulk updates. see topic
  • Chapoi – advised the RFP requester about using Rich Text Mode and demonstrated backtick formatting for poetry with custom CSS. see topic 1 see topic 2
  • Merefield – suggested Nested Replies as an alternative for navigation improvements in the RFP topic. see topic
  • Tannerabread – explained the canonical URL format for numerical tags and why the ambiguity exists. see topic

From unlisted topics to poetic spaces, the Discourse community proves that no detail is too small to care about — even leading spaces get their moment in the sun. :sun_with_face:

895

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the community generated 108 new posts across 42 topics, receiving a total of 160 likes. The most active users by likes and posts were:

User Likes Posts
Don 22 3
Lilly 20 9
Moin 16 7
Nicolsdennis 9 8
Chapoi 8 6
Thadeus 8 3
Angus 5 4
HAWK 5 2
Liu_5580 5 1
Merefield 4 4

Interesting Topics

Marketplace

  • A detailed RFP for a Discourse UX overhaul – Thadeus is looking for an experienced developer to revitalize their community forum. The scope includes theme customization, database cleanup, plugin audit, and UX tweaks. Chapoi suggested using Rich Text Mode and Nested Replies as potential solutions, while Merefield weighed in with insights. Read more

Community Building

  • Don revamped their forum’s visitor flow to comply with age restrictions without harming SEO. By showing a preview card above the login form, visitors see what they’re unlocking before signing in, drastically reducing bounce rates. Nathank noted this approach could benefit many private Discourse instances. Read more

#Self-hosting

  • The ongoing guide on installing Discourse on a self-hosted VPS saw contributions from Ed_S, Gid, Andrew_Rowe, Merefield, Darkpixlz, NateDhaliwal, and Lilly. Users discussed backup frequency, VPS provider choice (OVHcloud vs. Contabo), and the best OS – with consensus to stick to a plain Ubuntu install. Read more

#Announcements

  • Granular group-based permissions for anonymous and logged-in users – Lilly raised an issue with the disallowed_groups setting, and Martin and Moin helped debug it. The feature now correctly hides everyone and anonymous_users from dropdowns, improving theme component configuration. Read more

Support

  • Richie asked whether email notifications are sent for unlisted topics – Moin confirmed that unlisting does not prevent notifications, so Mentions and watched categories still trigger emails, even if the topic is hidden. Read more

  • LotusJeff seeks an automated spam account deletion workflow based on email bounces. Chapoi pointed to existing settings like purge_unactivated_users_grace_period_days and the new Workflows feature, while Lilly suggested hCaptcha. The topic is a great example of combining core tools with custom automation. Read more

  • Pinetree1111 asked how to preserve leading spaces in poetry – the community provided multiple creative solutions: Lilly demonstrated &nbsp;, Chapoi showed code blocks with custom CSS, and Rdweb recommended the <pre> tag. A lively conversation about composer accessibility. Read more

bug

  • Don reported a deprecation notice when clearing recent searches – Awesomerobot quickly acknowledged the bug and opened a fix. Read more

  • Overgrow uncovered a subtle bug where site settings go stale in Sidekiq after a re-fork – a detailed analysis showed that settings changed after master boot are not refreshed in child Sidekiq processes. Tgxworld has already opened a PR to fix it. Read more

  • Nicolsdennis hit a migration issue with Workflows – a missing table (discourse_workflows_webhooks) caused repeated job exceptions. After investigation, he manually created the table and shared a workaround for others on the latest branch. Read more

wordpress

General

  • Nicolsdennis is building a social mobile & desktop client for Discourse communities, showcasing video chat bridges, a custom composer, and a secure opt-in system for self-hosted forums. The project appears to be nearing a release. Read more

#Theme-Component

  • Don shared a fun implementation of the “Be the first to reply” component – a battery‑fading animation that perfectly matches their forum’s theme. Code included for others to use. Read more

#Plugin

  • Lilly updated the Group User Status plugin to take advantage of the new disallowed_groups setting, preventing unwanted groups from being selected. The plugin auto-updates on the next Discourse upgrade. Read more

bug (cont.)

  • A fix for numerical tags failing in the composer – Tannerabread reproduced the issue and is working on a resolution. Tags that are purely numeric would neither create nor apply correctly. Read more

Activity by the Team Group

The Discourse team was highly active across many topics yesterday. Here’s what they were up to:

Yesterday’s blend of creative visitor flows, meticulous bug hunting, and helpful Q&A proves that meta.discourse.org is where ideas come to life – and where the community always has your back.

896

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the community produced 79 new posts and 42 new topics, with 127 likes given across the board. The top contributors by likes and posts were:

Interesting Topics

#Theme component

  • Don released a new Soft Login Required component that creates a flexible gate for anonymous visitors, redirecting them to /login while preserving SEO and allowing route exclusions. Read more

  • On the Topic Cards component, IrisBetty requested that the author field respect the site’s name display settings. Awesomerobot promptly added real‑name support. Read more

  • TimMOz reported a bug in Versatile Banner where changing the cookie name did not make the banner reappear. Awesomerobot released a fix restoring proper cookie behaviour. Read more

  • Steven fixed a deprecation warning in the MD Topic List Mobile component, making it compatible with the latest Discourse version. Read more

bug

  • The stalled PR for edit history for category moderators was reopened. Zogstrip updated the code after a security‑related delay and is now ready to merge. Read more

  • Tgxworld opened a fix for stale site settings after Sidekiq re‑forks, addressing a caching issue. Read more

  • Zogstrip changed the behaviour of the “Title has already been used” check for secure categories: the error now appears only if the user can actually see the existing topic, and a helpful link is provided. Read more

  • Moin reported a TypeError when submitting flags with custom content (require‑message flags). Tannerabread is working on the fix to align nested topic behaviour with non‑nested. Read more

  • Nat fixed an issue where deleted posts still showed full content when translation was enabled, also excluding author‑deleted posts from wasteful backfilling. Read more

  • Ryanturner discovered that reply‑by‑email from Outlook drops everything after a numbered list because the email receiver incorrectly treats <ol> as a signature marker. Zogstrip asked for a sample email to reproduce the bug. Read more

#Feature

  • Nat implemented translatable custom sidebar links and sections, closing a long‑standing feature request. Sidebar items can now be localised via the interface. Read more

  • Oniel proposed a new site setting to allow configuring the Telegram Bot API base URL, enabling the chat integration to work through proxies in environments where Telegram is blocked. Read more

#Announcements

  • The easier account signup using email codes feature saw continued discussion. Moin pointed out that generic usernames (user12, etc.) are increasing, and Rishabh noted they are exploring simpler username flows. A fix for a related issue was merged. Read more

  • Lindsey announced a new admin experience for RSS Polling, featuring a dedicated Feeds tab, test‑feed functionality, and recent poll history with detailed per‑item results. Read more

  • Martin clarified that the GIFs‑moving‑to‑core feature has been deployed for Discourse‑hosted sites, while self‑hosted admins need to enable it and set up Klipy API keys. Read more

#Plugin

  • The Discourse hCaptcha plugin was renamed to Discourse Captcha to support both hCaptcha and reCAPTCHA, with a migration path for existing installations. Juan_David_Martínez provided full setup instructions. Read more

  • Angus pushed fixes to the Custom Wizard plugin, resolving deprecation warnings and restoring full functionality. Jenmck confirmed the update works. Read more

#Community Building

  • The topic “How I Revamped Our Forum’s Visitor Flow” sparked discussion about balancing UX and compliance. Don followed up by releasing the Soft Login Required theme component. Read more

Activity by the Team Group

  • Awesomerobot updated the Topic Cards component to respect name display settings, and fixed the Versatile Banner cookie issue. View | View

  • Zogstrip reopened and updated the category moderator edit history PR, changed the title uniqueness behaviour in secure categories, and asked for a sample email to debug the Outlook numbered‑list bug. View | View | View

  • Nat fixed the deleted post translation issue, implemented translatable sidebar links, and investigated a private category description translation bug. View | View | View

  • Moin clarified the New tab tooltip change, explained how to quote chat messages in topics, pointed out the generic username problem in email signup, discussed flagging bot posts, reported a login‑state bug on the topic list, and helped diagnose the flag type error. View | View | View | View | View | View

  • Lilly updated the Group User Status plugin with granular permission settings and shared a formatting tip for preserving indentation in poems. View | View

  • Chapoi engaged on the category moderator edit history thread and advised on spam automation using new workflow features and site settings. View | View

  • Tannerabread worked on fixing the flag type error and merged a fix for numerical tags not working in the composer. View | View

  • Tgxworld fixed stale site settings in Sidekiq after a re‑fork. View

  • Martin deployed the GIFs‑to‑core feature for hosted sites and clarified the configuration required for self‑hosted admins. View

  • Lindsey announced the new RSS Polling admin interface. View

  • Rishabh acknowledged feedback on the email signup feature and noted they are exploring simpler username flows. View

  • Angus pushed fixes to the Custom Wizard plugin, resolving deprecation warnings. View

  • Juan_David_Martínez announced the renaming and expansion of the Discourse Captcha plugin to support both hCaptcha and reCAPTCHA. View

Yesterday’s flurry of fixes and features shows that the Discourse community never sleeps – and neither do its robots!

897

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the community produced 93 new posts and 41 new topics, with a total of 165 likes across returned posts. The most active and liked contributors were:

Interesting Topics

#Announcements

  • Current Projects – July 2026 – Rishabh published the monthly newsletter covering recent, ongoing, and upcoming work. Highlights include the launch of the Free Plan, redesigned admin dashboard, overhauled AI Image Captions (now running in the background with ARIA support), improvements to the Events plugin with Zoom integration, a new Kanban plugin, easier signup via email codes, and a new Workflows system for automations. Read more.

  • Data Explorer :handshake: AI – Generate queries with AI – Nat announced that Discourse AI can now generate SQL queries for the Data Explorer plugin. Users can describe their needs in plain language, and the AI agent will produce a validated query. New default queries for traffic, community health, moderation, and admin audit reports are also shipped. Read more.

  • Making post images more accessible with Discourse AI – Nat unveiled a rework of AI image captions. Captions are now generated in the background after posting, stored separately from post raw, and used for screen readers, image lightboxes, and search indexing. Locale-specific captions are supported, and an optional backfill job can process existing images. Read more.

  • A new “default homepage” site setting – Awesomerobot introduced a new site setting that replaces the confusing top menu workaround. Admins can now pick a homepage directly, and it’s possible to set a homepage that isn’t in the top menu (e.g., categories only). Read more.

  • A new admin experience for RSS Polling – Lindsey shared a fully rebuilt admin interface for the RSS Polling plugin, featuring a dedicated feed form, test feed functionality, poll history with per-item detail, and two new site settings for timeout and verbose logging. Read more.

  • Easier account signup using email codes – Rishabh detailed the move from email confirmation links to one-time verification codes for faster signups, especially on mobile. Feedback includes concerns about auto-generated usernames and the tight 3-day rename window. Read more.

  • A preview of the new Workflows feature – The team previewed the Workflows system for powerful automations. Eviepayne requested a dedicated forum category and the ability to send chat messages to individual users instead of channels. Read more.

  • Introducing nested replies – Discussion continues on the nested replies feature. JonahAragon1 provided thoughtful feedback: moderators need an optional chronological flat view, threads should remember collapsed state, new replies should be highlighted, and the “X new replies” button needs better placement. Read more.

development

  • [Showcase] RSVP Speed Reader & Document Library for Discourse – Don presented an experimental plugin that allows users to upload and read e-books / documents (PDF, DOCX, EPUB, TXT, MD) with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) at adjustable speeds. Features include ORP alignment and a document library with progress tracking. Read more.

#Plugin

  • Discourse Captcha – In a long-running topic, the captcha plugin is now bundled in core. Lilly and Tobiaseigen clarified that self-hosters who upgraded in the last year don’t need to remove discourse-hCaptcha from app.yml. One1 confirmed it works well after turning it on. Read more.

#Feature

  • Feature request: translate custom sidebar links and sections – Nat reported that this feature is now done; custom sidebar translations are supported via the new localization system. Read more.

#Self-hosting

  • Internal server error when sending new user a personal message – Stephtara encountered an ArgumentError: unknown keyword: :private_message_context when trying to PM a new user. Zogstrip and Merefield advised checking logs and updating to the latest Discourse version to see if the bug is already fixed. Read more.

  • Installing Discourse on a self-hosted VPS – a process with FAQs – Gid asked practical questions about using PuTTY, editing app.yml, and choosing VPS extras. Merefield recommended Windows Terminal over PuTTY, and NateDhaliwal advised skipping the optional apps and just starting the install. Read more.

  • I can’t upload photo after setting Cloudflare R2 – Haha resolved the issue after Lilly pointed out that the S3 region must be set to US East (N. Virginia) and the CORS policy must include the ETag exposed header. R2 uploads now work. Read more.

bug

  • Custom sidebar section translations break after changing site’s default locale – Don reported an edge case where if custom sidebar sections are created under one locale and the default locale is later changed, the translation dropdown becomes scrambled. Translation mappings invert, causing confusion. Read more.

Activity by the Team Group

Members of the Discourse team were highly active yesterday, driving announcements, bug fixes, and community support.

  • Rishabh posted the Current Projects – July 2026 newsletter and engaged in the Easier account signup discussion, noting that auto-generated usernames are being explored further. link | link
  • Awesomerobot introduced the new default homepage setting, fixed the Versatile Banner theme component (cookie issues), and updated the Force Mobile Homepage and Warn admins/tl4 theme components. Also clarified that direct chat messages cannot be added to existing 1:1 conversations. link | link | link | link
  • Nat launched AI-generated Data Explorer queries and the new AI image captions feature, and closed the feature request for translating custom sidebar sections. link | link | link
  • Lindsey published the revamped RSS Polling admin interface, answering questions about feed filtering and broken links. link
  • Zogstrip helped with multiple debugging threads: RSS Polling (feed date limits), internal server error on PMs, tag restrictions, and reply-by-email issues. Also merged a PR for Telegram bot API URL configuration. link | link | link | link | link
  • Moin provided feedback on signup email codes, noting the problem of auto-generated usernames. link
  • Chapoi announced that chat notification settings have moved to the main Notifications preferences, and confirmed that the mobile composer preview toggle removal was intentional. link | link
  • J.Jaffeux answered a support question in French on how to add a member to an existing direct chat channel. link
  • Tobiaseigen clarified that the Discourse Captcha plugin is bundled in core; self-hosters should remove the old plugin from app.yml only if they haven’t updated in a year. link
  • David merged a PR from Awesomerobot to fix the Warn admins/tl4 theme component. link

Yesterday’s activity was so action-packed that even the RSS feeds needed a new admin interface to keep up—and now they’re ready to poll with confidence!

898

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the meta community generated 113 new posts across 41 new topics, receiving 196 likes in total.

Top Users by Engagement

User Likes Received Posts Created
Nat 39 6
Chapoi 16 7
Nathank 12 7
NateDhaliwal 11 5
JonahAragon1 11 4
Merefield 10 7
Alteras 10 1
Moin 9 5
Lilly 7 6
Gormus 7 4

Interesting Topics

Grouped by category, each bullet covers a single topic with a brief prose summary and an inline link.

#Announcements

  • Making post images more accessible with Discourse AI – Nat announced that AI image captions can now be generated in the background for post images, stored separately, and used for screen readers, search, and lightboxes. Loginerror asked about search engine crawling, and Nat clarified the captions are rendered as aria-description. The feature also supports locale-specific captions with AI Translate, as shown in a follow-up post.

  • Data Explorer :handshake: AI – Generate Data Explorer queries with AI – Nat unveiled a new feature in data-explorer that uses Discourse AI to generate SQL queries from natural language prompts. Admins can update existing queries per prompt, and the system learns from existing community queries. New default reports for traffic, community health, and moderation are also shipped.

  • Introducing nested replies – The nested replies feature continues to generate feedback. JonahAragon1 shared extensive experience from his forum, including requests for a chronological flat view, collision persistence, and better unread indicators. Markvanlan responded with plans and hinted at making it optional. Moin demonstrated the new composer action to set reply references.

  • A new “default homepage” site setting – Awesomerobot introduced a site setting that lets admins choose the default homepage, including “first item in top menu”. Gormus raised compatibility questions with custom homepages, and Awesomerobot clarified limitations.

  • Pinned emoji groups and bulk import/export of custom emojis – Alteras announced two new features: admins can pin emoji groups to the top of the emoji picker, and they can import/export custom emojis in bulk via ZIP files with a CSV manifest. Bartv asked about moving emojis between groups.

  • Chat notification settings have moved – Chapoi announced that chat notification preferences are now consolidated into the main Notifications page, including a new push_notification_level dropdown. Existing preferences were migrated automatically.

  • Modernizing the Foundation theme – Per1234 noticed that enabling the “Modernize Foundation theme” upcoming change affected their custom theme. Chapoi explained that all themes inherit from Foundation, so base styling changes propagate.

#Self-hosting

  • Installing Discourse on a self hosted VPS. A process with FAQs – Gid continued his installation journey with numerous questions: using PuTTY vs. Windows Terminal, whether to include VPS app bundles, and fixing SSH timeouts. Merefield, NateDhaliwal, Lilly, Canapin, and Pfaffman offered advice on using the standard install doc, skipping unnecessary panels, and using tmux for long builds.

  • Internal server when trying to send new user a personal message – where to start? ideas? – Stephtara reported that updating Discourse resolved the issue. Canapin and Zogstrip agreed that rebuilding is often the magic fix.

  • I can’t upload photo after setting Cloudflare R2 – Haha struggled with uploads until Lilly pointed out the need to set the S3 region to US East (N. Virginia) and provided the correct CORS policy. Haha confirmed that worked while other regions failed.

  • AI Embeddings Semantic Search returns 500 error – Akanora faced a 500 error with semantic search. Falco asked about embeddings model setup. Nat advised checking /logs, and Akanora discovered a dimension mismatch (768 vs 3072), fixed by recreating the Gemini embeddings configuration.

#Community Building

#Theme component

  • Auto Timestamp Title – Andy_Smith published a new theme component that auto-fills the topic title with a timestamp when the composer opens, configurable via settings. Chapoi suggested using Theme Creator for a preview, and Don requested a category restriction setting.

  • Force Mobile Homepage – Tshenry merged a fix for this component and thanked contributors.

#Feature

  • Allow users to see trust level 3 progress on user profile – A long-running feature request saw new debate. Khenmu argued that TL3 is a compromise, while NateDhaliwal defended it as a sieving mechanism. Moin joined with perspective on trust levels as automated permission systems.

  • Include date and time (and maybe location and description) in Oneboxes for Events – Nathank celebrated that this feature has been completed, linking to a live example.

  • Change “in reply to” when editing – JonahAragon1 noted that the new feature allows changing reply‑to only if it was originally set, but not adding one from scratch. Lilly pointed to a theme component for reply button labels.

#Site feedback

  • Cannot view post preview in mobile composer? – NateDhaliwal reported the desktop preview button missing on mobile. Chapoi confirmed it’s intentional; previews are still available via the Markdown/RTE toggle.

  • Workflows – Forum and feature feedback – Eviepayne shared excitement for the Workflows feature and requested a dedicated category, plus nodes for chat messages, category management, and plugin API integration. They also suggested interoperability with n8n nodes.

development

  • Skills for authoring themes and blocks – Nathank reported bugs in the Upcoming Events Block (sorting) and Category Banners Block (settings not respected). Manuel advised that the API is still experimental and changes are coming.

Support

  • Header messes up on mid-size viewports on the Horizon Theme – Nathank described a folding-phone display issue. Chapoi could not repro on Meta. Nathank later found the culprit was a “Left side hamburger menu” theme component incompatible with Horizon.

bug

  • Issue with iOS 16.7 photo upload? – Sok777 reported upload failures on iOS 16.7 devices. David wondered if it’s related to recent WASM resizing work. Disabling “Composer media optimization” led to a stuck 0% progress.

  • Cannot change Post Ownership (Android/Chrome) – Merefield described an issue where the keyboard disappears when trying to type in the combo box for post ownership change on Android Chrome.

  • Custom sidebar section translations break after changing the site’s default locale – Don detailed an edge case where changing the default locale scrambles translation mappings for custom sidebar sections.

#Plugin

  • Workspace groups – Anton_Akhmerov clarified that converting a category to a workspace requires an empty top-level category. Merefield asked how it differs from his own Category Home plugin.

  • Resenha – Add Discord-style Voice Rooms to Your Community – Nathank suggested hooking Resenha into the Livestream mechanism for event-triggered room access. Johnny_McIvor reported bugs with room slug updates and deletion.

  • Discourse Reactions – Martin announced that pinned custom emoji groups and bulk import/export (see #Announcements) are now integrated, fulfilling a prior request.

General

  • :keyboard: Do you use keyboard shortcuts? – SeizalHong shared that they rely on a few common shortcuts that become muscle memory.

#Data & reporting

  • AI Translation Progress Graph – Nat provided a long-awaited update: the graph now shows a loading animation, cached timing per content type (posts, topics, etc.), and per‑locale breakdowns that appear only when requested. The improvements are available after updating the site.

Activity by the Team Group

Several Discourse team members were active in the last 24 hours, contributing to announcements, support, and feature discussions.

  • Nat made multiple announcements: the new AI image captioning (post and follow-up), the Data Explorer AI integration (announcement), and replied to the AI embeddings error (post). They also updated the translation progress graph (post).
  • Chapoi announced the relocation of chat notification settings (post), helped with the Horizon theme header issue (post), and thanked Andy_Smith for the auto-timestamp component (post).
  • Awesomerobot introduced the new default homepage setting (post) and explained custom CSS for borders (post).
  • Markvanlan engaged with feedback on nested replies (post), addressing bug reports and feature requests.
  • Lindsey clarified vote sorting improvements in Topic Voting (post and another).
  • Falco asked about embeddings model setup (post).
  • David inquired about iOS upload issues (post).
  • Zogstrip offered remap advice for organizational role changes (post) and bumped a user’s trust level for DMs (post).
  • Alteras announced the emoji pinning and bulk import/export features (post).
  • Manuel noted that the Skills for themes/blocks API is experimental (post).
  • Martin linked the Reactions plugin to the new emoji features (post).
  • Tannerabread merged a fix for the flag submission bug, removing problematic code (post).

As the sun set on meta yesterday, nested replies and AI captions fought for attention, but it was the humble emoji who stole the show by packing 1,000 images into a single ZIP file—talk about a emotional baggage allowance!

899

Today on meta.discourse.org…

Date: 2026-07-24

Key Stats

  • 44 new topics and 127 new posts were created in the past 24 hours.
  • Total likes received on these posts: 174.

Top users by likes and posts:

User Likes Posts
Moin 27 15
Lilly 25 9
NateDhaliwal 13 11
Chapoi 9 7
Andy_Smith 9 2
One1 7 7
Zogstrip 6 4
Awesomerobot 6 3
Scavin 6 1
Nathank 5 5

Interesting Topics

#Community Building

  • How to handle changing organizational roles, re. past mentions on the forum – One1 raised a practical dilemma: a long‑term volunteer is stepping down, but old posts still mention them as the go‑to person. NateDhaliwal suggested a global banner, pinned topic, or Discourse Policy, while Zogstrip proposed a manual remap or editing mentions on‑the‑fly. read more

Support

  • Remove category description from create topic dropdown – Damian_Boon wanted to hide category descriptions in the composer selector. Moin pointed to a CSS solution from a previous topic, and Lilly provided the actual code. The fix was applied and appreciated. read more

  • Header messes up on mid-size viewports on the Horizon Theme – Nathank reported a layout issue on folding‑phone‑sized screens. Chapoi asked for a reproduction, and after some back‑and‑forth Nathank discovered a conflict with the Left side hamburger menu on mobile theme component. Lilly then contributed a fix in that component. read more

  • Hash/anchors are being stripped from URLs on mobile. How to stop that? – One1 found that anchor links in long guideline pages work on desktop but get stripped on mobile (Chrome/FF Android). Query parameters are stripped on desktop instead — a cross‑platform inconsistency. read more

  • 如何关闭社区私信邮件以降低成本 – Cshll asked how to disable private message emails to reduce mail server costs. NateDhaliwal advised setting the Default email messages level to “Never”. read more

  • Unable to access a basic group I created – CarlosC lost access to their free‑plan forum. Chapoi explained it may have been scheduled for decommission due to inactivity and is looking into recovery. read more

#Theme component

  • Auto Timestamp Title – Andy_Smith released a new component that auto‑fills a topic title with a configurable timestamp when the composer opens. Don and Heliosurge requested category/tag restrictions, which Andy_Smith quickly implemented. read more

  • Confirm Delete Post – Add a confirmation dialog before deleting posts – Scavin shared a theme component that shows a native Discourse danger dialog before a post is deleted, preventing accidental removals. read more

#Feature

  • Allow users to see trust level 3 progress on user profile – This long‑running discussion gained new life. Khenmu questioned the design of TL3, while NateDhaliwal defended it as a useful stepping stone. Moin compared trust levels to getting to know a new neighbour. NateDhaliwal also mentioned working on a plugin to show TL3 progress. read more

  • Apply prioritize_username_in_ux setting to the notification menu – Kddkd requested that the notification menu respect the prioritize_username_in_ux setting, so full names are shown in the bell icon dropdown for communities using real names. read more

bug

  • Frequent posters shown on Latest page – Moin highlighted that a PR (#39691) fixing this long‑standing visual glitch had been marked stale. Curi (OP and PR author) received help from Awesomerobot who reviewed and merged the fix. read more

  • Cannot change Post Ownership (Android/Chrome) – Merefield reported the change‑owner dialog doesn’t work on mobile. Awesomerobot confirmed a reproduction and pushed a fix in PR #42031. read more

#Announcements

  • Modernizing the Foundation theme – Per1234 was surprised that enabling “Modernize Foundation theme” affected their custom theme. Chapoi and Moin explained that all themes inherit from Foundation, so changes to default styling ripple everywhere. read more

  • Pinned emoji groups and bulk import/export of custom emojis – Bartv asked how to move emojis between groups. Alteras explained that re‑exporting and editing the CSV manifest is the method. read more

  • Introducing a docked composer for AI bot conversations – Tobiaseigen expressed strong dislike for the new docked composer, especially the Enter‑to‑send behaviour. NateDhaliwal and Jagster noted that Shift+Enter creates a new line, but users want a preference setting for this. read more

wordpress

  • Reply to comment directly on WordPress vs. Linked to Discourse topic – Temi_Tayo_From_Selmore wanted the WP‑Discourse plugin to allow in‑place commenting without redirecting to Discourse. Moin and Awesomerobot pointed to the full‑app embed system used by the Discourse blog (which runs on Ghost, not WordPress). read more

#Self-hosting

  • AI Embeddings Semantic Search returns 500 error – Akanora encountered a 500 error when using semantic search with Gemini. Nat suggested checking logs, and Akanora found the error was due to dimension mismatch (768 vs 3072). Re‑creating the embedding config fixed it. read more

#Site feedback

  • Workflows - Forum and feature feedback – Eviepayne proposed a dedicated workflows category and listed desired nodes (send chat message, create/delete categories, plugin API). Also suggested interoperability with n8n’s Discourse nodes. read more

Activity by the Team Group

Team members actively participated across several topics yesterday:

  • Chapoi helped diagnose Horizon theme header issues with Nathank (post 5), explained Foundation theme changes to Per1234 (post 111), and assisted CarlosC with a decommissioned free‑plan site (post 2).
  • Awesomerobot fixed the “Cannot change Post Ownership” bug on mobile (PR #42031) and guided Temi_Tayo_From_Selmore on the WordPress embed system (post 7).
  • Zogstrip offered advice on remapping old mentions (post 3), fixed a base64 SSO bug (PR #42024), addressed custom sidebar translation issues (PR #42027), and commented on the RSS polling admin experience (post 4).
  • Pmusaraj clarified the internal workings of the missing sidekiq_check translation fix and explained how to use system specs to reproduce admin notices (posts 4,6,8,10).
  • Markvanlan responded at length to nested replies feedback from JonahAragon1, discussing bugs, caching, and sorting ideas (post 69).
  • Featheredtoast merged a PR for the left‑side hamburger theme component to fix Horizon compatibility (post 51).
  • Falco added an exception for end‑of‑life iOS devices regarding the photo upload WASM resize bug (post 7).
  • Nat improved the AI Translation Progress Graph with loading indicators and per‑locale breakdowns (post 9), and guided Akanora on debugging embedding search errors (post 4).
  • Dax fixed the missing sidekiq_check translation via a PR (post 2).

Fun sign‑off: Yesterday, two entire theme components were born and a third got a life‑saving patch—meta.discourse.org was basically a code nursery, and we loved every minute of it! :hammer_and_wrench::baby:

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Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

Over the last 24 hours, the community produced 88 new posts across 30 topics, receiving 98 likes in total. The top contributors by likes and posts were:

Interesting Topics

Support

  • Allowing users to change their profile pictures without uploading images to the forum — Greyblue inquired about a workaround to let users set avatars while blocking image uploads elsewhere. Lilly suggested a restrict-uploads theme component and Moin explored the Embedded_media_post_allowed_groups setting. Greyblue later found success with the component and also limited oneboxes via max_oneboxes_per_post, though NateDhaliwal warned that could block legitimate link previews. Read more

  • Show likes on topics lists and categories - Redditish theme — Damian_Boon wanted to display like counts in the Redditish theme. Moin pointed out that general solutions may not work with custom themes. Damian then forked the theme and shared his JavaScript modifications to show a heart icon and like count. Read more

  • 如何关闭社区私信邮件以降低成本 — Cshll asked how to disable email notifications for private messages to reduce server costs. NateDhaliwal suggested setting the Default email messages level to Never. Read more

  • Auto Timestamp Title — Andy_Smith updated his theme component to allow restricting auto-fill to specific categories and tags, based on feedback from Don and Heliosurge. Read more

  • Hash/anchors are being stripped from URLs on mobile. How to stop that? — One1 reported that anchor links work on desktop but are stripped on Android mobile. Query parameters are also stripped on desktop. Lilly tested with standard header links and found them working on iOS. One1 explained that custom anchors are fragile because Discourse only recognizes dynamically generated header IDs. Read more

  • Header messes up on mid-size viewports on the Horizon Theme — Nathank reported that the Horizon theme header works well on his foldable phone thanks to Lilly’s left-side hamburger fix: “Lilly, you rock!” Read more

  • Discourse 接入 DeepSeek 官方开放平台后出现无响应问题 — AkarinLiu resolved a non‑response issue with the DeepSeek AI integration by switching to Xiaomi’s MIMO V2.5, because the official DeepSeek API lacks full OpenAI compatibility. Read more

#Feature

  • Allow owner of topic to set timer — Greymont requested that topic authors be able to set expiration timers on their own posts (e.g., for event announcements). Darkpixlz suggested limiting to higher trust levels, while Lilly noted the timer includes many staff‑only functions. Moin asked what “expired” should mean – delete or simply hide – and argued that a muted category might be a better approach. Read more

  • Feature request: Allow safe API access to site settings without an admin-level key — Philh proposed a new API scope or endpoint that lets non‑admin integrations read a safe subset of site configuration. Jenmck gave a strong +1, noting that their organization could then delegate non‑destructive settings management to trusted members. Merefield suggested building a small plugin with group‑based read access to specific settings. Read more

  • Allow users to see trust level 3 progress on user profile — NateDhaliwal created a plugin (discourse-see-tl3-progress) that shows TL2 users their progress toward TL3 using gauge.js gauges. He posed a question: what if a user is locked at TL2 – should they still see qualification status? Read more

#Announcements

  • Introducing a docked composer for AI bot conversations — The new Enter‑to‑send behaviour in AI bot chat continued to spark discussion. One1 lamented the change, NateDhaliwal suggested Shift+Enter, and Lilly released a theme component fix to revert Enter to newline. She also opened a pull request to add a site‑wide admin toggle. RGJ wished it were a user preference instead. Read more

  • Introducing nested replies — JonahAragon1 reported several bugs: topics reopening at the wrong post, sticky scrolling on mobile, and occasionally seeing replies from other topics (likely a caching issue). He also noted performance lag on browsers with JIT disabled. Read more

bug

  • Automatic highlighting fails for some fenced code blocks — Irkode discovered that sometimes code blocks with no language set get lang-auto which highlight.js can’t process in time. He provided a Markdown example that fails on try.discourse.org and suggested a plugin to re‑run auto‑detection. NateDhaliwal initially thought it worked, but Irkode clarified that the browser console shows successful highlighting only after the Discourse re‑detection kicks in – and sometimes it doesn’t. Read more

  • Disabling registrations while allowing private invites — Chapoi confirmed a bug where disabling registrations also broke private invitations. He submitted a fix on discourse core. Read more

  • Fallback for user_in_X theme setting support fails when resolved value is false — Moin reported that when a user is not in any allowed group, the new user_in_X check returns undefined instead of false, causing a fallback error. He suggested returning false early. Read more

#Theme component

  • Confirm Delete Post – Add a confirmation dialog before deleting posts — Scavin released a new theme component that uses Discourse’s native danger dialog to confirm post deletions. It works on both desktop and mobile, includes English and Simplified Chinese translations, and does not modify core. Read more

  • Bot enter button fix for Discourse AI — Lilly published a theme component that reverts the AI bot message composer’s Enter‑to‑send behaviour back to newline. Works with or without the docked composer. Read more

#Praise

  • 如果让我选一个论坛框架开论坛，我还是会选择 Discourse！ — AkarinLiu praised Discourse after migrating from Flarum, highlighting the better mobile UX and integrated AI features for content safety and translation. Read more

General

  • Discourse Meetup at CCC Congress in Hamburg? — Ethsim2 created a public poll to gauge interest in a European Discourse operators meetup, either online or at FOSDEM, CCC Congress, or Re:Publica. Topics include self‑hosting, moderation, and sustainability. Read more

development

  • Now in Beta: See TL3 Progress for TL2 users — NateDhaliwal announced his plugin now shows a visual gauge for TL3 progress, with customizable colours and icon. He asked for feedback and suggestions. Read more

Activity by the Team Group

This section summarises contributions from members of Team (Discourse staff/team) over the past 24 hours.

Fun fact from yesterday’s activity: Even the AI bot got a makeover—thanks to Lilly’s theme component, the bot now knows that pressing Enter should mean “new line,” not “goodbye conversation.” Sometimes the best way to improve a bot is to give it a little human TLC.

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Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the community added 82 new posts and 27 new topics, contributing to a total of 127 likes across all activity.

Top posters by likes and posts:

User Posts Likes
NateDhaliwal 8 27
Lilly 15 23
AkarinLiu 6 14
EricGT 2 9
Damian_Boon 5 8
Kairo162 6 7
Chapoi 3 5
HAWK 3 5
Nathank 1 4
Andrew_Rowe 3 3

Interesting Topics

development

  • Now in Beta: See TL3 Progress for TL2 users – NateDhaliwal released a new plugin that uses Gauge.js to show trust level 3 progress to TL2 users in a modal. EricGT suggested adding estimated dates and warnings about gamification, while Chapoi proposed a more compact progress bar to avoid exploitation concerns. Read more →

  • Facebook-style Topic Modal – Is it better? – Damian_Boon shared a desktop modal that opens topics in an overlay, inspired by Facebook. Lilly liked the execution and praised the site. Read more →

  • Fallback for user_in_X theme setting support fails when resolved value is false – Moin reported a bug where theme settings using user_in_ group support could break when the user isn’t in any group. Martin quickly identified the fix and pushed a patch for copy-post. Read more →

Support

  • Does anybody know how to hide the email section? – Kairo162 asked how to hide the email field in the user profile for screenshots. Lilly explained that only staff can see it and offered CSS via Stylus. Read more →

  • Peut on changer le texte dans la notification – Gilles wants to customise notification text for topic voting “Je veux y jouer”. HAWK pointed to admin customisation. Lilly suggested using dedicated voting plugins instead. Read more →

  • Show likes on topics lists and categories – Redditish theme – Damian_Boon shared a code snippet to display like counts on topic rows. Lilly asked for a screenshot, provided by Damian. Read more →

  • External Login function throwing error – Vtan303 reported a login.externalLogin is not a function error on version 2026.6.0. Andrew_Rowe confirmed it works on the latest version. Read more →

  • Hash/anchors are being stripped from URLs on mobile – One1 raised a long-standing issue where custom anchor IDs in links are removed on mobile. Lilly demonstrated that Discourse’s auto-generated header anchors work fine. Read more →

#Theme component

#Theme

  • A reddit-ish theme for Discourse – Damian_Boon shared his customisations: hiding the right sidebar, adding a sticky left sidebar, and showing likes in topic lists. Lilly commented on the fun logo fish/pig mystery. Read more →

#Praise

  • 如果让我选一个论坛框架开论坛，我还是会选择 Discourse！ – AkarinLiu praised Discourse over Flarum for its mobile UX and AI moderation, though missing GeoIP support. Canapin asked about cost and features. Read more →

#Feature

enterprise

  • Access and engagement strategies – HAWK opened a discussion about barriers to product team engagement in communities, including notification fatigue and trust erosion. Read more →

bug

Activity by the Team Group

The Discourse team was active across several discussions yesterday:

  • Chapoi contributed extensively to the TL3 progress plugin thread, providing UX feedback and suggesting a mid‑ground between transparency and gamification. See post. He also responded in the Foundation theme modernization topic, confirming the eventual rollout of changes to all sites. See post.
  • Martin fixed a bug in the copy-post theme component where fallback group setting logic failed when the resolved value was false. Pull request.
  • Featheredtoast supported Lilly’s explanation on the left-side hamburger menu component, confirming the design rationale. See post.
  • Nat weighed in on the AI Translation Progress Graph topic, agreeing with the request for a date‑picker in translation settings. See post.
  • Zogstrip fixed the SSO sync bug involving + characters in base64 payloads. See resolution.
  • Andrew_Rowe contributed to the Trust Level 3 progress feature request, discussing the implications of locking users at a trust level. See post. He also confirmed that external login works on the latest version for Vtan303. See post.

Yesterday, a user wondered if their carp was holding a fish or a pig – the real mystery of the day remains unsolved, but at least the halos are pretty.

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Today on meta.discourse.org…

Key Stats

In the last 24 hours, the community generated 148 new posts across 52 new topics, receiving 206 likes.

Top contributors by activity and likes:

User Posts Likes
Lilly 11 32
Chapoi 16 22
NateDhaliwal 8 21
Markvanlan 2 14
Awesomerobot 10 13
EricGT 5 13
Damian_Boon 13 12
Nathank 3 9
JammyDodger 5 7
One1 8 6

Interesting Topics

#Announcements

development

#Theme-component

Support

bug

#Feature

#Extras

#Site-feedback

Activity by the Team Group

The Discourse team was busy across several topics yesterday. Here’s a summary of their contributions:

  • Chapoi provided extensive design feedback on the TL3 progress plugin (post 6, post 8, post 11), helped a translation requester understand the process (post 2, post 4), investigated the upload icon confusion (post 2, post 4, post 5), confirmed the timeline for the Foundation theme modernization (post 114), and clarified the discrepancy in unseen results (post 2).

  • Markvanlan announced the hot sorting feature for nested replies (post 1) and committed two fixes for nested replies (post 73).

  • Awesomerobot provided technical advice on multiple threads: suggested HTML anchors to handle hash stripping on mobile (post 6), recommended the light-dark() CSS function for color scheme variables (post 2), updated the reset filter button on upcoming changes (post 2), and added a theme setting to show likes in the Redditish theme (post 8). He also pointed to a better resource for query strings (post 4) and confirmed the Category Groups theme component works with Horizon (post 58), and that DiscoTOC uses anchor links rather than heading ids (post 489).

  • Sam fixed the media review bypass bug (post 2) and posted a detailed proposal for AI agent skills (post 1).

  • Zogstrip announced the new pending user reminder default (post 1).

  • David landed a commit for the iOS photo upload issue (post 11).

  • Nat chimed in on the AI translation features, supporting the idea of a date picker (post 5) and agreeing with feedback on the progress graph (post 11).

  • Martin acknowledged and fixed a fallback bug in the copy-post component (post 3, post 4).

  • Featheredtoast concurred with Lilly on the hamburger menu placement and noted he hadn’t optimized for the “jump” layout (post 54).

Yesterday’s activity proves that even a carp can dream of Facebook modals—and a few bold tweaks can turn a humble forum into a community magnet. :fish: