I’ve been experimenting with the discourse/discourse_dev Docker image (on Windows 11 laptop) and noticed a small friction point in the developer workflow. When running Discourse in development mode without outbound email configured: 1. You can reach the signup/login page via Ember CLI (localhost:4…

[image] Ethsim2: Is there a helper task for this (rake admin:create etc.)? Yes there is: [image] Install Discourse on Ubuntu or Debian for Development Create New Admin To create a new admin, run the following command: bin/rails admin:create Follow the prompts, and a new admin account w…

Thanks! That solves it - I hadn’t come across bin/rails admin:create while experimenting with the discourse_dev container. What initially confused me was that the normal UI signup flow works up to the point of creating the account, but login is then blocked by email confirmation if SMTP isn’t confi…

[image] Ethsim2: in the development setup docs I am not sure it’s needed in that guide because it says [image] Install Discourse for development using Docker d/boot_dev --init # wait while: # - dependencies are installed, # - the database is migrated, and # - an admi…

If you do need email access in your dev environment, you can also run mailhog. All you need to do is open a new command line in your Discourse directory and run mailhog. Then if you visit localhost:8025 you can see emails that would normally be sent out, no need to configure anything. [image]

Thanks both - that makes sense. I think the distinction is that the documented d/boot_dev --init path already creates the admin user, so my confusion came from experimenting around the dev environment rather than following that exact init flow end-to-end. The MailHog tip is also helpful. I hadn’t …

[image] Ethsim2: One small separate question while I’m exploring the dev UI: what are the small icon buttons in the vertical toolbar used for? Those? [image] That is the dev toolbar. You can toggle safe mode , verbose localization, and upcoming changes. You can also display plugin outlets an…

Dev environment: recommended way to bootstrap the first admin account without email?

Development

Moin May 16, 2026, 4:26pm 7

Those?

That is the dev toolbar. You can toggle safe mode, verbose localization, and upcoming changes. You can also display plugin outlets and blocks.

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Dev environment: recommended way to bootstrap the first admin account without email?

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