Okay, so if I already have a well-developed plugin in development mode, how do I move that plugin to production without relying on third-party services? Is there even a way to do that?

I’m not the first to ask (others have asked before) but the discussion keeps getting more complicated, and in the end, you guys never actually answer anything. There’s no justification for this approach that doesn’t allow for flexibility. At least try WordPress or another service once, and you’ll s…

[image] Willy: you guys Just to be clear: I do not work for Discourse.org . I’m just a user here, just like you. [image] Willy: There’s no justification for this approach that doesn’t allow for flexibility. At least try WordPress or another service once, and you’ll see that installing plu…

Using proper source control will save you loads of heartache and issues down the line. It keeps your plugin safe for the future and helps keep an audit trail of updates. It provides a modular way of separating concerns, reducing complexity. It allows you to manage your instances independently, mak…

i’m curious how you built and tested a “well-developed” plugin without using github or some other similar repository service? how did you develop “many small plugins” for discourse? [image] Willy: but the discussion keeps getting more complicated, and in the end, you guys never actually answer …

I don’t know if hosting on Codeberg should work on Discourse plugins. If it is, that’s probably what the OP is looking for. I’m agree with questioning the use of Github. They removed ~300.000 repositories (DMCA related) with no prior communication and CMU study’s methodology — checking whether prev…

So you recommend Discourse team move away from GitHub? There are several alternatives and that’s fine. Use them if you must, but if you aren’t prepared to put in a little work, don’t bother running Discourse imho.

Is that what you call combative? I’m sorry, but nobody’s been fighting, you’re probably just being too sensitive. And I’m sorry if that sounded combative. Anyway, to answer your question, I obviously did it with a disposable GitHub account, but they’re so small that I don’t really have to test them…

It’s like saying you want a car, but can’t be bother getting the annual road-worthiness check. It’s just the cost of doing business when hosting publicly on the open web. I’m sure if you want to, you can work out a way to modify the install scripts and symlink them from somewhere on your server, b…

Even simpler if you don’t want to install the discourse_theme gem, themes can be uploaded as a zip file and you could build quite a lot in the admin UI directly. And to reiterate, unless you’re working with ruby you don’t need a plugin at all, so a theme is likely what you’re asking for… no git nee…

Good point! But the advantage of discourse_theme is the instant way it updates in place so you can quickly checkout changes without having to zip an update and re-upload.

How to install plugins without using a third-party host?

Support Self-hosting

Ed_S (Ed S) June 27, 2026, 11:50am 29

This surely is the right answer here. It respects the original parameters of the question. This hasn’t been a great thread from the perspective of showing a positive and supportive community.

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How to install plugins without using a third-party host?

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