Appreciate the response.
I say this with the utmost respect but Discourse, out of the box, effectively requires its own server. Using a reverse proxy to run a web server parallel to Discourse on the same VPS is hit or miss, as evidenced by the comments and other complaints, and SSL may or may not work. It’s also virtually impossible to get two instances of Discourse on the same server. All of that, to me, is obstructive. There’s no other forum software, including high-end platforms like XenForo or Invision, that requires that level of effort with that amount of uncertainty. They’re expensive packages so I suppose you’re getting what you don’t pay for with Discourse. As a new user looking at all of these hurdles, it just seems as though Discourse was designed with nothing else in mind (i.e. websites).
For what it’s worth, as noted in my original post, I used a one-click deployment for Discourse. So, I’ll need to do everything in reverse to try and get Apache (or Nginx if I can’t find a tutorial) on the same server. If I’m going to use Discourse as my primary forum platform, I’m not interested in running two servers for one community. That’s just silly.