Q1 How exactly is Discourse free? They say its 100% free if self hosting.
1.1 Does this only mean custom building this using your own infrastructure?
1.2 Does this also mean it can be free for those who already have hosting with a provider like Wix?
1.3 Does it not allow connecting to my own domain with Wix without paying Discourse?
Q2 This is just a feature of my Wix site. How can Discourse be set up/connected to/integrated with Wix?
2.1 Does Wix have some native integration for this?
2.2 Subdomains..?
2.3 Zapier?
I’m quite clueless about this setup, if people can explain an overview clarifying these that’d be great. Also, people who’ve explored & tried building forums for their websites, I’d appreciate related experiences, advice & tips.
To run Discourse without any limitation, you can either self-host, or run the Enterprise plan with Discourse hosting.
Ultimately, it’s not that simple to be 100% free. Even with self-hosting, you need to pay for a server [1], domain (but Discourse now offers free *.discourse.diy domains during installation), and a reliable SMTP service if you have a large userbase (if not, something like Brevo with 300 emails/day could work).
In terms of hosting, no, it cannot. It also won’t work, since Discourse needs a linux-based server, and uses a database, uses Docker, etc etc.
Could you elaborate further on what ‘integration’ you’re looking for? From the top of my head, these few came to mind:
Unless you use the Google Cloud or Oracle free tier, but those are so underpoered they can barely run Discourse. Your phone likely has better specs. ↩︎
Thanks for that great response. You cleared pretty much all my current doubts.
By integration at this stage I was mostly looking for a way to have it more deeply ‘integrated’ with my current Wix site; to at least host it there & on my domain. But as yall have well explained I understand that it can’t work & can only get close to that with pro plan.
If yall find better workarounds for this in the near future, pls update here. Specially if it’s a way a rookie coder like I can build
Major Proposal@Discourse@noahl : Would yall consider some partnership with Wix, to make it available in the Wix ecosystem?
You can reach Wix’s huge customer base with this. Specially since recently there’s been a huge demand in the Wix community for a forum app. Last year Wix made a terrible decision in shutting down their Wix Forum app, which used be a highly useful & valued app, & a core part of many people’s sites. So people were outraged. You can look this up. So there’s a large customer base at Wix that are still looking for a good alternative. Discourse is perfect. & Wix users will thank you for this.
