# How many hours does it take to install Discourse?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [February 12, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399 "2018-02-12T18:44:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Openmind](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Openmind)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/1 "2018-02-12T18:44:35Z")
Hi, I’m not a developer so I hired a company that has been creating my website. Now I want the team to add Discourse to my site. How do I calculate or estimate how many hours it will take the developers to install and integrate Discourse? Is there any way to tell? Many thanks, Torsten
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### Author:  [@vinothkannans](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vinothkannans)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 6:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/2 "2018-02-12T18:48:26Z")
> **Set up Discourse in the cloud in under 30 minutes** with zero knowledge of Rails or Linux shell. We recommend [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=5fa48ac82415), but these steps will work on any **Docker-compatible** cloud provider or local server.
>
> > :bell: Don’t have 30 minutes to set this up? For a flat one-time fee of $99, the community can install Discourse in the cloud for you. [Click here to purchase a self-supported community install](https://www.literatecomputing.com/product/discourse-install/).
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md)
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### Author:  [@Timelord](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Timelord)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 6:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/3 "2018-02-12T18:51:39Z")
Even for an absolute beginner, it should not take more than a hour to get it up and running.
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### Author:  [@Openmind](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Openmind)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/4 "2018-02-12T18:59:53Z")
My site is hosted in my Google Cloud account, I take it will be as easy to install as with DigitalOcean?
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### Author:  [@vinothkannans](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vinothkannans)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 7:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/5 "2018-02-12T19:01:12Z")
Yes. It will be easy to setup.
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### Author:  [@Timelord](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Timelord)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/6 "2018-02-12T19:03:15Z")
Assuming that the Google Cloud meets the requirement, then yes, the installation should be pretty much the same
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### Author:  [@Openmind](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Openmind)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/7 "2018-02-12T19:07:47Z")
What is the ‘requirement’?
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### Author:  [@Anil\_Gupta](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Anil_Gupta)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/8 "2018-02-12T21:00:35Z")
Yes, it takes about 15-20 minutes to install on Google cloud.
We did it and were really impressed with Google’s infrastructure.
The official discourse install steps work seamlessly (the one that Vinoth has shared the link for).
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2018, 9:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/9 "2018-02-12T21:29:39Z")
It’s all pretty well explained in the install document linked above. It’s been edited for several years so that it answers questions like the ones you’re asking.
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### Author:  [@LoganRTW](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LoganRTW)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 3:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/10 "2020-03-30T03:17:06Z")
Digital Ocean has been such a nightmare… their Discourse droplets keep blocking the cloudflare connection, but I got it to work with the basic Ubuntu server and self installation. Digital Ocean and Cloudflare are not friends and it can be a massive headache.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 3:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/11 "2020-03-30T03:20:22Z")
Cloudflare isn’t necessary or recommended, it only adds complexity. Start out simple.
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 4:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/12 "2020-03-30T04:27:19Z")
Oh hi @LoganRTW
That shouldn’t be the case, I have many customers running discourse on digital ocean behind cloudflare firewall. It takes a fair bit of tweaking at cloudflare side to make everything aligned and discourse needs to know that it’s running behind cloudflare so that it trusts their IP addresses.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 6:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/13 "2020-03-30T06:23:04Z")
Discourse can’t be installed while Cloudflare is active, that’s an instant problem.
Processes such as Let’s Encrypt require the server be directly accessible during setup.
I get the inclination to turn it on from the outset, if you’re using it in other places it makes perfect sense to start out that way, but in this case it massively complicates the install process to activate prematurely.
Even once Discourse is installed CloudFlare is arguably of limited utility. You may be able to offload some asset traffic, but you’re also adding extra network hops between the application and server which has an appreciable impact on how snappy things will feel. All of their performance features are know to cause problems, so if you do use CloudFlare with Discourse in the future I would recommend a page rule to “disable performance” for your community URL. CloudFlare definitely can’t optimize the javascript better than Discourse does itself.
DigitalOcean only block certain outbound SMTP ports, and even then typically only on the VPS of new accounts. As a rule they don’t put any network policy between their VPS and the outside world.
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/14 "2020-03-30T07:03:54Z")
> [@Stephen](#):
>
> Discourse can’t be installed while Cloudflare is active, that’s an instant problem.
Said who?
Don’t give a letsencrypt email and edit the yml to include cloudflare template. Then one rebuild is all it needs to be installed with cloudflare and without letsencrypt.
Rocket loader and objects caching needs to be disabled at cloudflare for it to be used in a sane way but that doesn’t imply that one can’t install discourse with cloudflare.
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### Author:  [@LoganRTW](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LoganRTW)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/15 "2020-03-30T07:04:22Z")
THIS is probably my issue. See, Cloudflare isn’t just my proxy, it’s my registrar… so I will have to try to disable to proxy to see if I can rebuild with let’s encrypt.
The only site I have that is working is one that was registered on another registrar then transferred to cloudflare after the installation. This looks like a thread I need to pull. I’ll see how this goes.
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/16 "2020-03-30T07:05:31Z")
Disabling proxy is simple. Go to dns tab in cloudflare … Click on that orange cloud … It’ll become grey and proxy will be disabled.
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### Author:  [@LoganRTW](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LoganRTW)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/17 "2020-03-30T07:06:44Z")
OK.. so I’ll try this too. Having cloudflare as my registrar has proven weird. I was trying to use the cloudflare template and letsencrypt… so are you saying to not use the let’s encrypt templates or to just leave the LETSENCRTPY\_ACCOUNT\_EMAIL blank?
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/18 "2020-03-30T07:08:37Z")
If You’re willing to use cloudflare (as a proxy/WAF) then the best choice is to let them handle the SSL and disable letsencrypt.
You’ll have to block access to your VPS (through UFW or something similar) to only allow cloudflare to be able to communicate. They also provide an origin certificate to deny any requests not presenting the certificate.
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### Author:  [@LoganRTW](https://meta.discourse.org/u/LoganRTW)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/19 "2020-03-30T07:10:00Z")
I did get it to work this way… however, I’m running things through forum.teksyndicate and if I get the forum to to work them my wordpress site (hosted elsewhere) is broken, lol. I can’t find the happy SSL for them all.
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### Author:  [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2020, 7:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399/20 "2020-03-30T07:11:12Z")
Umm … I may be able to help you with that. Is it only SSL that breaks on wordpress?
If so, Page rules can help.
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-hours-does-it-take-to-install-discourse/80399.md?page=2)