How to install Discourse without a mail server?

Installation
1

Hi,

I’d like to install Discourse for our wiki community (we use MediaWiki). Currently, we do not have a SMTP server - since our wiki doesn’t require users to have an email to create an account. I would want SSO enabled so logged-in wiki users are redirected to the discourse forums logged-in (and they don’t see the discourse log in/ registration page). How do I get Discourse up and running for such a use case (no SMTP server + SSO)?

If we choose to go with a business/ enterprise plan, can something like this be configured specifically for us?

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2

I think you can get away with installing using a SMTP as a Service, for the setup email, and then just remove the API key, for example. Discourse relays a little bit in email but I think it can be achieved.

3

You can create the admin account via console and configure your forum

But the fact that you don’t verify emails in the website might be an issue, even with sso configuration

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4

This sounds like a horrible idea. How do you know who your users are and keep spammers out?

But if you could configure mediaWiki as an SSO master (it appears that you would need to write this extension) you could have it generate bogus email addresses (like USERNAME@mybogusemail.bogus) and have it send along the “email is validated” thing in the SSO payload.

Oh. I’d be surprised if they’d go along with that, but if you have lots of money, anything is possible. They’ll supply the SMTP server, but you’ll need to have users with actual email addresses, I’d think…

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