A selection of the most interesting discussions from the last 24 hours, grouped by category.
#Announcements
Sam gave admins a peek under the hood with the new detailed admin AI logs page, adding richer filtering, retention controls, and streaming-response decoding to help diagnose ai issues. Read more
The unified new view for the topic list continues to evolve, with Awesomerobot floating a mock-up to address complaints about combined counts and extra clicks, while Petr0 and Mbauman shared detailed feedback from their communities. Read more
A scary calendar-and-events outage affecting ~1,200 users was traced to a missing site setting after a Discourse upgrade; Awesomerobot confirmed a fix is in place. Read more
Shauny reported Chat and Poll options not working in Firefox and Firefox-related browsers, and later marked it solved after switching off Cloudflare’s WebMCP. Read more
The discobot tutorial was caught rejecting valid onebox URLs like example.com and Exotic_Shorthair; Chapoi and Martin narrowed it to a brittle regex and a PR is up. Read more
Gingerbeardman shared a handy workaround for the “Unable to exit editing post” glitch on mobile: closing and reopening the forum lets the draft pop back for submission. Read more
#Feature
Digitalities revived the discussion on allowing multiple OIDC sources, sharing that they’re exploring Discourse OAuth2 Basic with EGI Check-in and weighing SAML as a third option. Read more
#Theme component
Don shipped a big update to Topic Preview Modal, adding an open_all_topic_links setting so almost any topic link can open in a preview modal; users are already asking for mobile swipe-to-close. Read more
Merefield has been polishing the Composer Character Count theme component with a fresh round of updates. Read more
#Community Building
In a wide-ranging thread on declining activity in support forums, Nickdb and Satonotdead debated AI-assisted topics, model “nerfing”, and whether the snake is eating itself — while Mevo argued non-technical communities are holding up better. Read more
A philosophical thread on whether money can be the only moderator of a forum drew comparisons to YouTube, Steemit, and crypto tip systems, with Mevo noting pay-to-post feels off-putting. Read more
Markersocial highlighted bulk actions confusion between “Delete Topics” and “Delete Posts”, noting the confirmation text promises permanent deletion even when the setting is disabled. Read more
Moin reported it’s impossible to close a chat on tablets, with the hidden close button and long-press menu not working on iPad; NateDhaliwal reproduced a glitchy swipe X. Read more
#Extras
WebBuilder asked how communities handle external video content from platforms like TikTok and Kuaishou; Andrew_Rowe pointed to oneboxes and livestream plugins, plus the new Discord-style Resenha rooms. Read more
#Self-hosting
Ducks reported Discourse package fails to build through nix-shell and opened a PR to nixpkgs to update its outdated Discourse version. Read more
Zogstrip introduced the experimental “recently used tags” tag picker, which starts by showing tags from your own recent topics. Read more
Lindsey announced improved crawler detection, so admins can separate likely automated traffic from genuine human pageviews, and answered dashboard refresh questions in the admin dashboard AMA. Read more
Chapoi fixed the icon picker’s capital-letter search (read more), debugged Discobot’s onebox regex with Martin confirming the fix (read more), and shared notes on iOS auto-zoom in the Safari PWA thread.
Rishabh shared further admin invite improvements, including new UI touches (read more), and clarified the username step during email-code signup (read more).
David followed up on the composer transformer PR and added support for skipping the empty-post validation. Read more
Falco confirmed Ask Discourse will respect the user preference for opening external links in a new tab. Read more
Team members also continued shepherding the unified topic list discussion, with Awesomerobot testing a possible count-splitting mock-up. Read more
From resurrecting 1,200 calendars to teaching Discobot about exotic shorthairs, it was a day where the Discourse team truly earned their keep — see you all tomorrow!
Improved crawler detection:Lindsey announced that the admin dashboard can now separate “likely crawlers” from real anonymous human visitors using signals like automation user agents, datacenter ASNs, pageview velocity, rapid navigation, and missing engagement. The experimental feature is opt-in via the Upcoming changes admin page. read more Ted asked whether likely crawlers will still count toward monthly pageview limits, and Lindsey said the question is still being decided internally. read more
Current Projects – August 2026:Rishabh published the monthly roadmap covering recently finished work — dashboard improvements, Zoom webinar livestreams in Events, AI Image Captions v2 — plus in-flight projects including Workflows, a new Kanban plugin, smarter Helper Bot capabilities, and the composer redesign. read more Awesomerobot clarified that Zoom livestream is separate from Resenha’s Discord-style voice/video rooms, and noted that YouTube, Twitch, Kick, and other oneboxable providers can be allowed through livestream_allowed_hosts. read more
Detailed admin AI logs:Sam introduced a new admin-only page at /admin/plugins/discourse-ai/ai-logs with retention controls, streaming response decoding, and rich filtering to make diagnosing Discourse AI issues much easier. read more
Prioritize recently used tags: A new tag picker behaviour that surfaces recently used tags prompted debate about whether it creates a self-reinforcing personalization loop. Sren-1 argued it could reduce overall tag variety, while Satonotdead suggested a middle ground that lets users choose between personalized and consistent behaviour. read more
#Community Building
AI auto-replies to gain trust level:Divinebaboon asked how moderators deal with users running AI agents that automatically read threads and post responses to farm trust levels. The discussion covered explicit LLM policies, warnings and bans, AI-detection agents, and even custom quest-based trust systems. read more
Drastic drop in support forum activity: The long-running debate continued on whether AI is eating support-forum traffic. Mbauman shared that programming-language communities are losing new posters at the entry point, while Nickdb argued that deeply technical nuance, context, and expertise are still where AI falls short. read more
Show us your Workflows:HAWK invited the community to share what they are building with the new Workflows feature, including a clever “Weekly Update Reminder” workflow that applies progressively worse CSS the longer someone delays their check-in. read more
#Translations
Basque language interface option:Happyhappy asked why Basque is not available as a Discourse interface language. Moin explained that languages are added once roughly 50% of the software is translated, and Basque is currently only 13% translated. Happyhappy then began rallying native speakers to contribute through Crowdin. read more
Horizon “New topic” button position:Satonotdead wanted to move the Horizon sidebar “New topic” button to a floating bottom-right position. Chapoi offered a CSS snippet, then diagnosed a tricky stacking-context issue caused by a position: sticky parent, with a z-index workaround on the sidebar wrapper. read more
Nginx crash-loops after container restart:OxFilla reported that the Discourse base image ships brotli_static in discourse.conf but the distro nginx package never loads the Brotli module, causing unknown directive "brotli_static" on restart. The workaround is adding include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf; to the main nginx config. read more
#Developer Guides
Drag, resize, and gesture primitives: A new ui-kit reference page documents input-driven gesture primitives such as dDragAndDropSource, dPointerDrag, dResizeHandles, and dSwipe, including argument tables and practical code samples for building custom interactions. read more
#Theme component
F NAV mobile navigation tabs:Satonotdead reported that the floating mobile timeline overlaps the F NAV navbar, and asked whether a “New topic” tab could be supported. Maintainer Don pushed an update and explained how to use /new-topic as a tab destination. read more
Merging profile sections/pages:Satonotdead suggested simplifying the Discourse profile page by merging Security into Account and Following into Notifications, arguing the current experience has too many buttons and too much noise for regular users. read more
#Feature
Combining category types:Ecki experimented with mixing topic voting and private comments in a single category, and Satonotdead shared a dream scenario where an initial composer form classifies a post and routes it to the appropriate functionality, such as voting for ideas or solving for support. read more
#Plugin
Discourse Calendar and Events regressions:Aurora reported two issues after the latest Events update: recurring events can no longer be set to the “fourth weekday” of a month (only “Last weekday” is offered), and categories with Events enabled now present New Event as the primary action, making it less obvious how to create a regular topic. read more
Yesterday proved that keeping a forum human means outsmarting AI bots, calming crawler spikes, and sometimes teaching an entire language to Crowdin — but at least the workflows are getting more creative.
@merefield restructured the “Locations Plugin” into a base plugin plus a Pro extension, with no manual migration needed for existing installs. Pro adds IP-based user-location estimation, nearby-topic discovery, and a WebGL users-map globe.
Zogstrip detailed the inner workings of the weekly update reminder workflow, including the LLM classifier and late-group logic. He also pointed to a bulk-actions PR that will bring delete-topic actions back into bulk mode.
Yesterday’s most ironically delightful moment was watching HAWK debug while the screen literally floated away — here’s to hoping today’s workflows stay slightly more grounded.
The Discourse Free plan beta discussion continued as Dowlass worked through what an “LLM” actually is and asked whether trust levels make sense for a small, private invite-only community. NateDhaliwal stepped in with a link to the detailed trust level explainer, and the thread remains a handy crash course for anyone still wondering what invite only really changes. read more
New chat notification sound packs turned out to be a pleasant surprise for One1, who hadn’t realized chat could make noise at all. Falco confirmed that you can hear a preview simply by selecting a pack in preferences, so no more testing blindly. read more
The composer redesign keeps polishing up nicely: Darkpixlz noticed that an earlier issue where the text input overlapped was fixed and gave the team a well-deserved clap. read more
Jagster wondered why AI-translated posts stopped appearing after switching the interface from Finnish to English. Moin explained that adding FI to “Content languages” tells Discourse you can already read Finnish, so it won’t show translations; removing FI restored the English versions immediately. read more
Satonotdead ran into the age-old struggle of trying to move category boxes to the top, and concluded that the limitation is probably core behavior rather than a missing CSS trick. The thread includes helpful context on Boxes-style subcategories built with logos and short descriptions. read more
#Site Management
In the evergreen closed/private community topic, Dowlass asked how invitations actually get to people in an invite-only forum. Moin showed where the invite links live in the sidebar and avatar menu, and confirmed they can be sent by email or shared directly as links. read more
Darkpixlz reported a bad UX when a topic you replied to is solved: the notification is identical whether you solved it or not, which makes it hard to know if people got the help they needed. They suggested different strings such as “Your reply solved this topic!” vs. “Topic solved!” read more
Philh took aim at the wrong description for the S3 disable cleanup setting, proposing friendlier copy that avoids double negatives, e.g. “Manage S3 backup retention externally” while explaining that Discourse will simply stop deleting old backups automatically. read more
Satonotdead opened a design discussion about the pills of subcategories, suggesting that inline links like #community-building:praise carry too much redundant information when a plain subcategory link would do. read more
More ux from Satonotdead: tag icons disappear from category descriptions once category-groups are enabled. They suspect a conflict with the Horizon theme disabling descriptions, and are looking for a way to keep tag icons visible. read more
Need to re-order the groups list without renaming anything? Satonotdead shared a CSS trick using flex/grid order values on .group-box[data-group-name] selectors, which is a lot cleaner than the old 1_group, 2_group naming hack. read more
#Theme component
Don announced a hefty upgrade to the Guest Gate Theme Component with a new v2.0 analytics layer: full GTM support, a dedicated JS helper module, events for guest_gate_shown and guest_gate_click, and a promise of no PII collection. read more
#Plugin
The Resenha plugin keeps turning heads: NateDhaliwal asked whether 1-to-1 voice/video calls could be locked down to specific groups to avoid spam, and Falco confirmed that the privilege is off by default and groups have to be explicitly added. read more
Akanora filed a nasty animated avatars upload bug: on v2026.8.0-latest.1, the discourse-animated-avatars plugin breaks every avatar upload, not just GIFs, because the optimization pipeline is looking for a missing resize_animated key. Sidekiq logs point straight to OptimizedImage.optimize. read more
#Self-hosting
After updating from February to July 2026, Joshua8600’s forum lost the unread indicator and bold name for auto-bumped threads — the topics still jump to the top, but mods can no longer see them at a glance. They’re asking if this is a bug or an intentional behavior change. read more
Falco confirmed in the chat sound packs thread that selecting a pack plays an instant preview, and in Resenha clarified that 1-to-1 calls are off by default until groups are granted access.
Don introduced an analytics tracking layer for Guest Gate v2.0, with GTM support, custom browser events, and guest_gate_shown / guest_gate_click events.
Nat asked a follow-up on conversational AI search, requesting more detail on why it wasn’t working and asking about the settings screen.
Philh proposed clearer copy for the S3 cleanup setting to remove the dreaded double negative.
Here’s hoping tomorrow’s biggest battle is a purring notification bell rather than a missing resize_animated key!
Here’s what happened across the Discourse Meta community in the last 24 hours: plugin fixes, container debates, a Xenforo migration success story, and plenty of design discussions.
Key Stats
78 new posts were published across 29 new topics, collecting 70 likes in the returned posts.
The busiest areas of the forum were #Plugin, Support and #Self-hosting, with #Community Building close behind.
Reactions are coming to everyone. Discourse is moving toward enabling Reactions by default for all sites, and the rollout is surfacing friction: Paul_King found that adding a mandatory heart to post metadata broke his preferred thumbs-up default reaction, with the best available workaround being to swap the heart for a “+1.” A useful reminder that even small defaults matter to community identity. Read more.
Tag counts leak on unlisted topics.Alltiagocom resurfaced a ten-year-old bug where tags assigned to unlisted topics still display their full count (e.g., abc (2)) to logged-out users, even though the tag page renders nothing. Falco confirmed the report as a duplicate of the original issue, so the underlying tags bug remains open.
#Community Building
From Xenforo to Discourse.Andrew_Bondshared the story of migrating a 750k-post, 20k-member Xenforo forum to Discourse — a 37-hour self-hosted migration that left him “delighted” and grateful for the platform’s frequent updates. HAWK asked which Xenforo features he misses, and the only real gap was Xenforo’s auto-quote-on-reply behavior, which NateDhaliwal and Moin both suggested solving with the Quick Quote theme component.
In praise of fighting.Mcwumbly shared an NYT interview with Priya Parker, whose new book The Art of Fighting argues that intentional, thoughtful conflict can be “a pathway to greater connection” — adding a fresh angle to the long-running debate about whether online communities avoid disagreement at their own peril.
A “sub-admin” role takes shape.Satonotdead pitched a new scoped admin role that would separate the “technical dashboard” from a “functional dashboard,” letting trusted community leaders manage moderation, sentiment models, translations, groups and stats — while keeping API keys, security settings and theme management strictly off-limits. Andrew_Rowe pointed out that much of the moderation scope is already achievable through trust levels and groups, and encouraged voting on the request.
#Plugin
TL3 progress bug squashed.Jimmy0017 discovered that the See TL3 Progress plugin could throw “you don’t have permission” errors when regular users viewed another member’s profile. They traced the cause and opened a fix pull request, which NateDhaliwal promptly merged — a textbook community-driven fix for the trust-levels plugin.
Faster search indexing.Soul unveiled Discourse-indexnow, a new plugin that pings Bing, Yandex and other IndexNow-compatible search engines the moment topics are created or edited. It comes with historical backfill, locale-aware URL submission (compatible with Content Localization), rate-limit backoff and a 7-day success/failure log — plus a standard plugin install guide.
Patreon sync mystery, plausibly solved.Cazadividendos dug deep into a Patreon sync failure where new paying members weren’t joining the patrons group despite successful syncs. Their forensic reading of the API response revealed that Patreon v2 now returns emails under member attributes, while the plugin’s V2.extract only reads emails from included user objects — explaining the 1968 pledges, 0 users synced result, and including a proposed patch that falls back to member emails.
#Theme component
Topic Preview Modal fixes land.Joo reported that the Topic Preview Modal breaks on the Horizon theme when “topic card high context” is enabled, and that “Open full topic” fails from suggested-topic previews. Satonotdead confirmed the issue, and Don shipped fixes for both bugs in the component repository, while inviting input on an optional per-category enable setting.
Leaner subcategory links.Martin shared a video mockup that turns inline subcategory links into hover-expandable pills, with a slight delay to prevent accidental triggers — and asked Awesomerobot if the interaction would be “too annoying.” It builds on Mcwumbly's agreement in the subcategory pills discussion that this corner of the UI needs polish.
Merefield broke down the two-container architecture — web/nginx in one, database/Redis in the other — and explained why bootstrapping a replacement while the site stays online makes upgrades far less stressful.
Don fixed the Topic Preview Modal on Horizon’s high-context topic card mode and repaired the “Open full topic” navigation, then asked the community how a per-category setting should behave.
HAWK welcomed the Xenforo migration story and asked the natural follow-up: which Xenforo features are actually missed on Discourse?
Martin posted a video mockup for hover-expandable subcategory links and invited Awesomerobot to judge whether the interaction is “too annoying.”
Yesterday gave us a 37-hour Xenforo migration, a hearty defense of two-container setups, and a philosophical debate about the art of fighting itself — may your rebuilds be downtime-free and your disagreements productively messy!
Tgxworldannounced the release of an admin-only Site Traffic Explorer as part of the redesigned admin dashboard, offering clear views of traffic patterns with filters for URL, referrer, country, network, browser, and IP address. By default it analyses the 200,000 most recent pageviews, and admins can tune that up to 1,000,000 via the site_traffic_explorer_event_limit site setting, with a note that higher limits require more database resources read more.
Gillessuggested adding a customizable toolbar to the Composer Redesign, especially for mobile users who must scroll through buttons. Chapoiconfirmed toolbar customization is an idea the team definitely shares, but noted it’s not part of a redesign focused on styling and layout rather than new features read more.
RGJreported a nasty bug where event descriptions over 1,000 characters fail silently — the event card either renders blank or shows the previous description, caused by a hard limit in the discourse_post_event_events table. Pacharaneroreproduced it on latest, and Louflagged the same underlying problem on the related feature request to increase the event description limit, where a visible validation error or unlimited descriptions are the preferred fixes read more.
Lew_Grothefiled a meticulous bug report showing that inviting via the REST API with group_names returns a 403 for group-owner users unless they are full Admins — even Moderator status fails, suggesting the API guardian check diverges from the web UI path and may explicitly require user.admin?read more.
Andrew_Roweadvised self-hosters never to count on the web UI upgrade path succeeding and always to be ready to rebuild from the command line, while Lillyoffered help with dual container setups behind Cloudflare and S3-compatible R2 object storage, calling it “super easy to maintain” read more.
From slaying conntrack dragons to defending the humble em dash, it was another gloriously eclectic 24 hours on meta — and as Satonotdeadreminded us: the em dash is fine, it’s AI that sucks!
Tgxworld released the admin-only Site Traffic Explorer as part of the new admin dashboard, with filters for URLs, referrers, countries, browsers, and IPs, plus a configurable site_traffic_explorer_event_limit setting; community members quickly offered feedback on tracking events and badge-heavy URL stats.
Loic shared the August 2026 monthly release with a link to the full changelog and patch releases for other supported versions.
Rishabh announced new Suspend user and Silence user options in the review queue, with smarter modal hiding and active-action indicators on the user card, as well as the PR behind the change.
Self-hosters continued debugging the PostgreSQL 18 update; Ethsim2 identified that the base image installs PostgreSQL 18 while the holdback template expects 15, and opened a discourse_docker PR.
Users continued exploring Discourse Workflows, with Patrickemin asking about filters and sample pinned data, and AJ_Quick sketching an ambitious stale-topic re-engagement workflow combining Data Explorer, AI summaries, and data tables.
#Self-hosting
Haris reported a missing Update button and a 404 on /admin/upgrade despite being an admin; Falco asked whether the docker-manager plugin was present in their app.yml.
In the 429 too many requests thread, ALinux asked about the Cloudflare template, and Andrew_Bond described a Docker/nginx/Cloudflare setup with real client IP restoration.
And with 131 MCP tools now at everyone’s fingertips, the only thing left to crop is an avatar — here’s to another day of building, bumping, and brainstorming on meta!
Lindsey announced that Discourse Calendar has been renamed to Discourse Events to better reflect its expanded feature set, which now includes easier event creation, improved RSVPs, recurring events, livestreaming, and Zoom webinar support. The plugin is available on Business and Enterprise plans. read more
Chapoi shared a newly redesigned system section for the admin dashboard, visible to self-hosters by default at the bottom of the dashboard (it can be moved via the configure menu). This builds on earlier feedback and more improvements are in the works. read more
Tgxworld responded to questions about the Site Traffic Explorer, clarifying that there are no plans to add event tracking, noting that badge-related URLs appear to come from bots, and deploying the feature to a hosted site after a user reported it missing. Alfi asked how the encircled values are calculated. read more
Nicolsdennis provided a major update on their social mobile & desktop client, showcasing revamped push notifications, a rewritten radio-powered audio room, a new dock UI modeled after Discourse chat, and a global Explore Directory. The project is rolling out for sysaru web, app, and Mac this month, with mobile following store approval. read more
#Plugin
Akanora hit a new fatal error in the Animated Avatar plugin after a recent fix, and Alteras traced it to a malformed --crop argument, pushing another fix. Satonotdead reported that animated WebP images remain unsupported, and Akanora confirmed the latest commit works for PNG and GIF uploads. Related upload failures were also reported in a dedicated bug topic. read more
In the Discourse Events plugin topic, Gilles suggested that event creators should be automatically RSVP’d, but Andrew_Rowe noted that admins often post events they don’t attend. Satonotdead proposed an opt-out checkbox defaulting to “attending” to cover both cases. read more
AJ_Quick shared a multi-workflow AI re-engagement system that summarizes stale topics, evaluates whether to bump or follow up, and posts based on forum idle time. Ethsim2 opened a PR adding Event close/open actions to Workflows, and J.Jaffeux pointed to JSON output customization. A vibrant thread of community examples is available in Show us your Workflows. read more
ProxyTracer responded to feedback about VPN blocking, suggesting an optional hCaptcha challenge instead of outright bans. Eisammy raised mobile network ASN considerations, while Satonotdead expressed privacy concerns about CAPTCHA-based approaches and shared a preference for proof-of-work solutions. read more
#Extras
Pacharanero introduced dsc, a comprehensive admin CLI for managing multiple self-hosted Discourses, with fleet updates over SSH, category export/import to Markdown, and LLM-friendly automation. The topic includes a roadmap, contribution guidelines, and a note about the August 2026 PostgreSQL upgrade. read more
Satonotdead filed a UX request that empty workflows should not be saved automatically, since admins often need to delete accidentally created workflows. The suggestion is to save only when at least one change has been made to the default template. read more
Richie shared a CSS workaround to re-order the groups list by full name using flexbox order and data attributes, thanking Satonotdead for the tip. The snippet can be added to themes to display groups in a custom order, and badges can be rearranged similarly. read more
#Theme component
In the Topic Preview Modal theme component, Don added a drag-to-close grip in the modal footer, but Damian_Boon preferred swipe-right to close and Asa demonstrated a conflict with iOS Safari’s back navigation. The discussion ended with the team going back to the drawing board on the gesture. read more
Martin submitted a PR to fix Discourse AI’s handling of the “everyone” group, also addressing a bug where ai_bot_allowed_groups_map could be blank. This follows a long-standing report and also touches on related AI UX issues such as missing summaries on Horizon and chatbot conversations. read more
#Self-hosting
Tobiaseigen shared a database.yml example for running multiple Discourse communities on one server, showing how host_names routes each domain to the correct database. This is a common question for self-hosters consolidating instances. read more
Pfaffman explained that the missing Update button on /admin/upgrade is likely due to recently moved settings, and recommended completing the required PostgreSQL upgrade via the command line before relying on the UI. read more
Lindsey announced the rename of Discourse Calendar to Discourse Events, linking to recent plugin improvements and feature documentation. read more
Chapoi shared the new system section in the admin dashboard and noted that further enhancements are in progress. read more
Tgxworld answered questions on the Site Traffic Explorer, confirmed no event tracking plans, and deployed the feature to a hosted site. read more
J.Jaffeux helped with workflow JSON output customization in the Discourse Workflows topic. read more
Martin submitted a PR to fix the “everyone” group in Discourse AI. read more
Pfaffman assisted a self-hoster with a missing Update button and advised on the PostgreSQL upgrade path. read more
Tobiaseigen shared a config example for running multiple communities on one server. read more
From calendar renames to animated avatar fixes and a fleet of AI workflows, it’s clear that yesterday’s community was busy turning static pages into living events — just don’t forget to RSVP to your own party!
It’s been a packed 24 hours on Meta, with the community shipping fixes, testing new gestures, sharing AI workflows, and helping a fellow admin wrestle with Let’s Encrypt.
Key Stats
Over the last 24 hours, Meta saw 101 new posts across 44 new topics, with 109 likes given out.
Don added three configurable dismiss options — None, Grip and Gesture — to his Topic Preview Modal theme component, making the mobile modal dismissible via swipe or the native Back gesture. Jagster tested it on an iPad and found the gestures inconsistent, while Satonotdead confirmed swipe and Back work on Android, and Damian_Boon said he “can’t wait” to get back to testing it.
The Featured Topics component got a rapid compatibility fix: RGJ reported it was broken on the 2026.1 ESR branch, and Manuel pinned the compat ceiling to 2026.4.999 after realising discourse/ui-kit/* imports only landed in 2026.5.0.
#Feature
Gilles requested a per-category alphabetical sort default, arguing the filter workaround hides the usual tile layout. RGJ backed the idea for “Lesson 1, Lesson 2…” course topics, Satonotdead agreed it would help glossary-style categories, and Moin pointed to the order:title-asc filter as a stopgap.
Awesomerobot showed a supported way to hide 3rd-level categories on the categories homepage without losing the layout, sharing before/after screenshots and confirming Level 2 category order stays intact for Tonja.
After the v2026.6 upgrade, FabienL spotted Foundation template styling issues such as extra spacing and lighter fonts. Moin connected it to the “modernizing Foundation” upcoming change, and Awesomerobot provided a one-line CSS override for the new -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased reset.
Welsh_Selkie wants one email per Group mention instead of notifying every member individually; Pfaffman's workaround is a dedicated “collector” account named after the group with the shared mailbox as its address.
ARK-Helena traced starred chats disappearing past 100 followed channels to the backend’s MAX_PUBLIC_CHANNEL_RESULTS limit, and Zogstrip quickly shipped a PR to fetch starred channels independently, complete with a “really, 100 starred channels?” aside.
Welsh_Selkie spent 40 minutes hunting for tag synonyms before Moin explained the wrench icon lives on the tag page itself; Satonotdead agreed the feature deserves a UX refresh.
#Community Building
Thomas_Rother is searching for German-language promo material ahead of Re:Publica Vienna, and Mae pointed to the AI translations feature as well as new CDCK YouTube videos and blog posts.
In the workflows thread, AJ_Quick shared a three-phase AI re-engagement workflow that summarises older popular topics, triages whether to revive them, and posts follow-ups during quiet periods. Mcwumbly then posted his team’s weekly report workflows with importable JSON files for moderation, site settings and trust levels.
Moin reported the search icon covering the search input on Meta’s Foundation theme; Awesomerobot confirmed Meta is testing the discoveries-1 branch and that the overlap affects users with Enable AI search discoveries unchecked as well as logged-out visitors — fix incoming.
#Self-hosting
After a tricky split to dual containers, Alltiagocom hit a Let’s Encrypt ECC rate-limit loop where --force fires on every boot. Pfaffman suggested requesting a cert with an additional hostname to reset the rate limit and advised against AI-generated template edits.
Martin announced the deprecation of 6 in favour of visibleGroups, because hidden group memberships make client-side permission checks unreliable, and documented new server-side alternatives plus a resolve_group_membership option for themes.
From swiping modals goodbye to resurrecting old topics with AI, yesterday was a whirlwind of 101 posts and 109 likes — just remember to star your chats before the 100-channel ceiling catches up with you!
Over the past 24 hours, Meta saw 76 new posts spread across 36 topics, with 107 likes received on returned posts. Here are the top users by posts and likes:
New drag-and-drop support for managing custom sidebar content — Lindsey announced that custom sidebar sections now support dragging links into the sidebar, dropping at the bottom to create a new section, and drag-to-reorder within and between sections. The categories and tags sidebar sections are not included in this new behavior. Link
Better insights into your community with the redesigned admin dashboard — Lindsey shared updates to the dashboard: the Activity by Category counts now link through to filtered topic lists, and the Who’s posting? report can compare additional groups. Hosted sites will get the changes on their next update. Link
Easier account signup using email codes — Rishabh posted an update on the signup flow: new members can now receive friendly generated usernames like “QuietFalcon42”, with a dice button to reroll. The word lists are configurable via random_username_adjectives and random_username_nouns, and the feature can be disabled with enable_random_usernames. Link
Deprecating the use of user.groups in the User model in JavaScript — Martin explained that currentUser.groups is being renamed to currentUser.visibleGroups, since users can belong to groups that aren’t visible to them and therefore cannot be used for reliable client-side permission checks. The post also covers server-side serializer alternatives and resolve_group_membership: true for theme settings. Link
RFC: A new versioning strategy for Discourse — Frye_Bradley asked how security fixes and dependency updates are backported to ESR releases. Mcwumbly confirmed supported ESRs receive security patches and pointed to v2026.1.8, while Featheredtoast noted that dependency upgrades are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Link
#Plugin
Discourse Workflows — J.Jaffeux confirmed that an event node is coming next week, Ethsim2 is working on open/close event operations in a PR, and a confusing pm_tags_allowed_for_groups error will be improved. Putty later confirmed that the suggested workaround solved the issue. Link
Discourse Newsletter Integration — Carlo shared a fork that adds Listmonk as an additional provider alongside the existing Mailchimp integration, and expressed hope that Listmonk support could eventually be merged into the official plugin. Satonotdead welcomed it as a solid self-hosted option. Link
Discourse Affiliate — AJ_Quick suggested adding an automatic affiliate disclosure notice to posts containing affiliate links, and proposed rewriting cloaked amzn.to links into direct Amazon links with the site’s own tag. They posted a successful test of a private plugin that does exactly that. Link
#Theme Component
Topic Preview Modal — Don merged configurable mobile dismiss gestures for the modal, including a grip option, swipe-up, and native Back gesture support. A follow-up added optional haptic feedback for Android devices via the modal_haptic_feedback setting. Link
Right Sidebar Blocks — Manuel clarified that the blocks used on the Meta Branded theme are custom builds using the new Blocks API, not Right Sidebar Blocks, and pointed to the Skills for authoring themes and blocks guide for anyone wanting to build their own. Link
Posts appear twice on homepage — A new user on the Horizon theme reported duplicate cards on the homepage. Moin identified that Topic List Previews is not compatible with Horizon, and Gryzor confirmed that removing it resolved the problem. Link
Route Group mentions to a single email instead of notifying every member individually? — Welsh_Selkie shared a follow-up after trying Pfaffman's suggestions, reporting that a workable setup was found so group mentions no longer ping every member by email. Link
Don’t show 🚫Closed label in group card — Typed-Sigterm argued that the Closed label is confusing for regular members, especially when translated, and Awesomerobot agreed that “invite only” might be a clearer alternative. Link
logged_in_users group page — Moin reported that the new pseudo-group has a working URL but an empty member list, which feels misleading, and suggested that the everyone pseudo-group approach is more intuitive. Link
Form template composer fields lose their newlines in the edit preview — ScaryLarryGames1 diagnosed that hidden type="text" inputs strip line breaks before the preview renders, flattening headings and lists into run-on text. A theme-level workaround exists, and a visually hidden <textarea> is suggested as a core fix. Link
Between dragging sidebar links into place, chasing duplicate homepage cards, and giving XenForo migrants a place to call home, yesterday proved there’s no such thing as a quiet day on Meta.
ErespawN shared a heartfelt thank-you to the Discourse development team, showing off a Turkish community built with custom Discord-style user cards, a cosmetics store, and a marketplace. Gilles and Eisammy were impressed, and ErespawN says the plugins may be shared with the community in the future.
#Theme
Donannounced FKB Pro v2, a big update focused on responsive behavior, performance, caching, accessibility, and maintainability. Gilles found a mobile category-description issue, and Donprovided a CSS grid fix. The same developer also shipped an update to the Topic Preview Modal component, adding a missing feature and a skeleton loader.
Don released Guest Gate v2.0, a major rewrite of the theme component with new triggers for time, scroll depth, and lightbox opens, plus optional analytics. It builds on the original Guest Gate Sign Up Popup plugin.
Overgrow introduced Discourse Bounce Guard, a new plugin that detects hard email delivery failures, stops mail to dead addresses, and can deactivate affected users.
Between Discord-style cosmetics, RPG-like stat cards, and a community quest to keep bounces out of your inbox, yesterday on Meta felt like a very productive guild meeting—roll for initiative!
Over the past 24 hours, Meta saw 54 new posts in 20 new topics, with 70 likes tallied across the returned activity. Here are the top users by likes received:
A multilingual thank-you thread highlighted ErespawN’s heavily customized community, from Discord avatar deco to a custom cosmetic plugin, with NateDhaliwal praising how far Discourse theming can go and Asa asking why only topic titles are translated. read more
Mcwumbly kicked off a naming debate for Kanban v2, asking whether the plugin should be called kanban, boards, or something else, and provided a live example board on Meta for reference. read more
#Theme component
Don updated Topic Preview Modal with a new timeline modal and two new swipe-hint settings, while Damian_Boon chased a nested-reply reload bug that he could reproduce on a test site. read more
Lilly alerted users of Group Sidebar Menus that the component now uses the new icon object type setting, with a seamless migration path in the core pull request. read more
#Plugin
EricGT praised See TL3 Progress as well-timed ahead of the upcoming TL3 work, and suggested the same kind of progress tracking could help TL0 users understand how to unlock posting privileges. read more
TripleU presented Dumbcourse, a bundled plugin with nine independently toggleable modules, including phantom reactions, an alternate SMTP relay, a stripped-down mobile-friendly /dumb frontend, smart search expansion, and a Telegram-bridged team chat. read more
ProxyTracer previewed an upcoming ProxyTracer release with captcha support and a login-monitoring tab, while noting the challenges of accurately identifying 4G/5G mobile IPs without punishing home wireless broadband users. read more
Damian_Boon found that nested replies are not rendered natively by the WordPress Discourse plugin; after hacking a local fix, he asked for official support, and Falco suggested filing a Contribute > Feature request tagged wp-discourse. read more
Martin confirmed the deprecation of user.groups in the JavaScript User model is now merged, so browser console warnings are active while third-party themes get time to migrate. read more
Mcwumbly closed out the Current Projects series and welcomed the community to the new Contribute > Projects category and kanban board. He also opened the Kanban v2 naming discussion and invited suggestions before the plugin name is finalized. read more
Falco confirmed that the redesigned Search page on Meta is the next version of Conversational AI Search, with a formal announcement coming soon, and later advised filing nested-reply support for the WordPress plugin as a Contribute > Feature request. read more · read more
Martin announced that the user.groups deprecation PR is merged, explaining that the team fixed core instances first and will leave the deprecation active for quite a while. read more
Yesterday’s forum-built forum-in-a-forum energy was strong — with a project kanban, a team chat inside a chat, and a Discord avatar deco to boot, Discourse just keeps proving the only real limit is your willingness to write another plugin. Keep on shipping!
Over the last 24 hours, the community produced 85 new posts across 35 topics, with 125 likes given in the returned posts. The top users by activity and likes received were:
Mcwumbly shared the new Kanban v2 plugin live on meta and asked the community for naming input. Jenmck worried that “boards” would clash with “discussion boards,” while Satonotdead suggested alternatives like “Status Boards” and listed feature ideas including batch-adding topics and full-screen improvements. Mcwumbly confirmed that drag-and-drop between columns works and shared roadmap dreams for board-wide activity streams and snapshot-style history. read more
#Announcements
Mcwumbly announced that the Current Projects post is the last issue in its current form, as Discourse moves project updates into Contribute > Projects topics with an accompanying kanban board view. Darkpixlz said the old digest format was nice for a quick overview, and Mcwumbly acknowledged the tradeoff while hoping the new topics let people follow what matters to them. read more
Feedback continued on the unified new view for the topic list. Seanblue raised concerns about the dismiss button becoming less useful when new and tracked topics are combined, and Martin clarified that there are contextual dismiss states plus possible dropdown options to make the behavior clearer. read more
Martin confirmed that the deprecation of 0 in the JavaScript User model has been merged. For now it only triggers browser console deprecation warnings, and removal will not happen until call sites are fixed across core, plugins, and themes. read more
Seel shared a community fork of the Journal plugin that works with the Glimmer post stream, giving users on newer Discourse versions an option while the original plugin remains unmaintained. read more
#Self-hosting
Ethsim2 wrote up a detailed backup download resume bug: the one-time email token is consumed before a multi-gigabyte transfer completes, so Safari’s byte-range retry gets a 422. They also opened a PR adding a bounded resume authorization while preserving the one-use token for initiating downloads. read more
Between naming a kanban board “cardboard,” hunting for German leporellos, and rescuing a 4GB iOS backup download, yesterday proved that Discourse communities never run out of creative problem-solving energy!
Falco announced Voice, Discord-style voice and video rooms bundled into every Discourse install, with peer-to-peer WebRTC, optional LiveKit routing, background blur, noise suppression, and live subtitles. Self-hosters can simply update and enable the plugin.
Nat unveiled Ask AI, a new natural-language search layer that combines keyword and semantic search to surface answers, and can create a draft topic when nothing good is found. Nat later pointed to AI usage monitoring after questions about token costs.
Rishabh introduced the new Admin Design Wizard, guiding admins through theme, palette, font, landing page, and search choices right after setup, with a rerun option for eligible existing sites.
Lindsey also shared a Data Explorer improvement that lets admins grant group access while creating a query, not only after saving it.
Mcwumbly announced the new Boards feature for kanban-style roadmaps and collaboration, with topic-backed cards, drag-and-drop columns, ACLs, and live updates, available on Business and Enterprise hosting plans.
Sam detailed plans for an automatically generated llms.txt for all sites, including a conservative default text that points AI agents at Discourse MCP and public endpoints.
#Plugin
On the Resenha topic, Falco confirmed the experiment is now part of core as Voice, closing the loop on the earlier plugin discussion.
In Discourse Workflows, Joo asked whether a new-tag trigger exists, and J.Jaffeux prompted for more details, while RGJ suggested using a webhook for tag creation.
RGJ reported that the chunked backup uploader can exceed Discourse’s request rate limit, receiving HTTP 429 responses that it never retries, causing entire backup uploads to fail.
RBoy found a Gemini Flash Lite regression after upgrading to 2026.8.0, where enabling “thinking” causes invalid-argument 400 errors and the Pro model is also affected.
With new voice rooms, AI search, and boards to organize it all, yesterday made it clear that Discourse isn’t just talking to each other — it’s talking to the future.
GitHub auth failure blocks upgrades:Jagster hit a fatal 0 error while rebuilding a two-container forum. Others confirmed the same problem, and Arkshine found a GitHub-side issue plus a temporary git config --global http.version HTTP/1.1 workaround; Pfaffman also reminded everyone that ./launcher cleanup can help when disk space is tight.
#Announcements
Mcwumbly unveiled the new Boards feature, a drag-and-drop, kanban-style tool bundled directly into Discourse core for Business and Enterprise plans. It supports topic-backed cards, standalone floater cards, per-board access control, and real-time updates.
Sam announced that every site will get an automatically generated 3 with a deliberately minimal default map that points AI agents to the Discourse MCP instead of encouraging bulk crawling. The thread included a lively debate about customisation, token budgets, and what belongs in a machine-readable map.
The team asked for feedback on admin report drill-downs, which now show the users and topics behind report numbers. Sren-1 shared detailed use cases around signups and accepted solutions, while Mcwumbly pointed to the Site Traffic Explorer for traffic-spike questions.
#Projects
Rishabh shared progress on the new site admin experience, including the redesigned design wizard, better invite flows, and next steps for onboarding hosted admins.
Mcwumbly opened a built-in MCP server project, proposing a core /mcp endpoint to replace the client-side MCP and enable cloud harnesses to integrate with Discourse.
In Discourse Workflows, Joo described using AI to classify newly created tags into existing tag groups. J.Jaffeux responded by adding tag-created triggers and an “add tag to tag group” node, with commits landing in the plugin.
RBoy reported that Disco Bot and AI Search break with Gemini after upgrading to 2026.8.0, including an invalid Role 'function' error from Gemini’s interaction endpoints. Sam advised switching to non-legacy endpoints and discussed the fast-moving LLM landscape.
Between GitHub’s credential tantrums and a flurry of new Boards, yesterday proved that even when the upgrade path gets rocky, there’s always a workaround—and a kanban card waiting to organize it.
The Discourse Admin Assistant arrives.Rishabh introduced the Discourse Admin Assistant, a chat-native agent for hosted Discourse sites that can answer documentation questions, change site settings, help with moderation, and check hosting plan details. It is available on Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans, while self-hosted sites can configure an LLM and enable the agent. read more
Workflows preview keeps getting love. Feedback continued on the Workflows feature preview, with Gilles praising the module as powerful and intuitive and suggesting a dedicated category for sharing community workflows. read more
GitHub outage knocked out some admin logins. The Error for logged in users and Git hang thread escalated when GitHub began limiting unauthenticated downloads; Falco traced the hang to over-eager feature notifications triggering git fetches, then merged a fix. read more
Badge topic/post links are missing. A new report shows badge lists such as Nice Reply and Nice Topic no longer display the post or topic links beneath each badge, and the same behavior is visible on Meta. read more
Error 500 after upgrade. A self-hosted site saw intermittent 500 errors after upgrading, seemingly tied to the _t cookie; Merefield asked for a backtrace from /logs to dig further. read more
Recurring events might finally roll over. In Create individual event topics for recurring events, Ethsim2 opened a PR adding an opt-in create_next_topic recurrence mode that keeps the completed event as an archive and creates a successor topic, including RSVP rollover semantics. read more
Connecting Voice to LiveKit.Pmusaraj wrote a step-by-step integration guide for routing Discourse Voice calls through a LiveKit media server, including room policies, recording options, and webhook setup. read more
ICS exports get proper timezone definitions.Ethsim2 investigated a one-hour Outlook time shift for Europe/Berlin events and opened a PR adding VTIMEZONE definitions to ICS exports so clients interpret daylight-saving rules correctly. read more
#Community Building
What should the next decade of the internet look like? A returning Mcwumblyrejoined the discussion on where online communities and Discourse go next, reflecting on AI, the persistence of typing words into boxes, and the opportunities ahead. read more
Pmusaraj wrote the LiveKit integration guide, covering LiveKit URL, API credentials, room policies, recording, and optional webhooks.
Nat jumped into the voice_rooms migration collision, identified the conflicting migration versions between Resenha and Voice, and offered a SQL workaround to rename the existing Resenha tables to Voice tables.
Yesterday proved that even when GitHub goes down, Discourse keeps the conversation going — just make sure your pitchfork workers get their coffee and your new Admin Assistant knows the way to Voice chat.
New Calendar Feature: End Date for Recurring Events — MiniForum couldn’t find the new end-date option at first; Ethsim2 helpfully clarified the difference between Insert date/time and Create event, and pointed to an existing feature request that matches the school-calendar use case of recurring weekly appointments read more.
Show us your Workflows — Per1234's standout share was a Discourse Update Notifier workflow that posts to a dedicated topic whenever the forum’s Discourse version is updated, complete with a live demo on the Arduino forum and full installation steps read more.
#Feature
Granular permissions for cameras and screen sharing — Falco has a PR ready for this Voice feature request, bringing fine-grained camera and screen-sharing permissions closer to reality read more.
Option to enable search for logged in users only? — Nat submitted PR #43281, adding an allow_anonymous_search site setting that sends anons from /search to the login page. Mcwumbly agreed it’s “sufficient to address this request as a first step” read more.
Allow Category Moderator to add or remove Users from that Category — Heliosurge pointed to the Category Restrictor plugin as a workaround, and Happyhappy noted that limiting group membership may be enough without adding moderation powers read more.
Editing event end date → post event date on topic title not updated — Ethsim2 opened PR #43285 with a thorough screen recording covering multiple start/end edit scenarios for event BBCode read more.
#Self-Hosting
How to fix the blank Ask AI response — Karthik_K1 logged Ask AI returning correct responses that never reach the UI; Nat diagnosed a likely request timeout caused by a 15.5-second response time. The issue reproduces only on desktop browsers so far read more.
A Social Mobile & Desktop Client for Communities (2) — Nicolsdennis showed off native Discourse Voice support in the Mesh client, including a side-by-side look at LiveKit vs. web-only voice, plus a companion app for live-streaming voice rooms — with a hopeful birthday publication tease read more.
#Sysadmins
Configuring AWS SES for outgoing, bounce, and incoming email — Simonk dropped a valuable correction: raw message delivery must be DISABLED on the SNS subscription, otherwise Discourse rejects notifications with HTTP 406 due to missing validation metadata.
From Voice rooms to calendar wrangling and VPN-blocking CAPTCHAs, it was a day of building, debugging, and birthday-wish launches — see you in the next 24 hours!
New Calendar Feature: End Date for Recurring Events —