I’ve installed discourse on sub-domain of my root domain. But today I found while surfing on google with my keywords one similar (Clone) discourse forum like mine on a different domain. Everything is the same like my site (Theme, plugin etc), even when I post any topic or any update then instantly it gets posted on that website. i.e That website too connected with my database. How can it be possible? How to solve this problem?
I hosted my forum on Digital Ocean and that same website also hosted on the digital ocean.
There are prior discussions of this phenomenon elsewhere on meta. You’ll get plenty of info by searching. it is not, incidentally, something that is unique or special to Discourse; it can happen to any site.
Yes. I know. It is not only related to discourse But how to solve this problem. How someone copied my all content and setup with the same database connection. Any solution?
AFAIK, any category that gives the everyone group read permission can serve content to browsers as well as cURL scrapers, RSS feeds, JSON parsers, etc.
If you set category permissions so that only the trust level 0 group and above can read, only registered members will be able to access content. Not ideal if you want the content to be found by search engines, but it should make the content theft more manageable.
Other than that, you could file a take down notice just as you would for any site.
Yes I have some well-chosen Categories that are private to members on both of my sites.
But don’t panic, let’s think about this for a second:
They can take the data and recreate the forum, perhaps, but who is going to visit?
Assuming you have an active community they will return to your URL and continue their discussions.
Forums can’t be just copied and automatically thrive - they require a population of users and active, creative, careful management.
On this new URL who is going to visit? Maybe one or two people find it on Google or other search engines, but how is this site going to have much engagement when there is no significant body of existing users? All the existing posts will have no local representation. New users will find it very odd that no-one is responding to their replies to existing posts. This will be a huge drag on new user adoption and their site may die.
Monetization - it costs money to run a forum and without a significant body of users clicking adverts, affiliate links (i hope you embedded lots of your own affiliate links ) or donating who is going to pay for everything? They will! How long will they be prepared to do that?
In any case they are going to have to build the community from almost scratch as the only posters will be new users and if you have much of the market already in your niche, who is going to google for an alternative?
It’s not much more than a functional backup test server!
Also, as they say: ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’. So take it as a compliment that you are doing a good job
Thank you for your valuable suggestions @merefield and I agree with that.
That same site connected with my database i.e whenever I post on my forum or any reply or even do like on any post that same thing happens on that website. It means, the same engagement happening on that website.
Also, the same duplicate content will create a problem for me in terms of SEO, That’s why I worried.
So they have some active job copying over your data continuously?!
Or are they simply pointing their domain to your IP? Are you running with HTTPS forced? Please enable Let’s Encrypt, which should put an end to such tomfoolery!:
Do you mind sharing the links to both forums (PMs work for me just fine) for investigating if that’s a legit clone or someone just mistakenly pointing back to Your IP?
Hi…
Thank you so much all of you for your kind suggestions.
Finally my issue is fixed by moving my forum cloudflare SSL to Lets encrypt SSL.
After using Lets encrypt SSL, that other domain is now redirecting to my domain automatically.
) or donating who is going to pay for everything? They will! How long will they be prepared to do that?