Install Discourse on Plesk / Ubuntu 14 without Docker

[bbparis (Bill Bird)]

Hello,

I have VPS includes Plesk web admin edition, where I manage about 6 domains. The hosting company told me that “it is not possible to add Docker to your VPS plan”, so is there a way to:

1: install Discourse without Docker
2: As I’m using Plesk for other domains, Is the installation of Discourse will make problems for other domains?
3: I want to install Discourse on a subdomain of one of my domain, example
forums.mydomain.com
is that issue make the installation harder instead of installing discourse on mydomain.com directly?

Please if you have any video, the things will be much better for me to avoid the maximum of problems during the installation.

Thank you very much for your help, as always!

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Install discourse on its own server in a sub domain. That’s easiest and in many ways best.

[dnsmichi (Michael Friedrich)]

Ubuntu 14 is too old, and goes EOL in a bit. Discourse needs modern software, which is bundled together in the Docker image. I wouldn‘t bother looking into installing them by yourselves - if you cannot have Docker installed, it will be hard to get all the other applications from the container installed too.

[bbparis (Bill Bird)]

Thank you both for your feedback. Ok, one more question, if I take Digital Ocean, can I install 2 copies of Discourse for 2 subdomains ?

[Cameron_D]

Yes, this guide is the best way to achieve that:

Multisite configuration with Docker

You may wish to host multiple domains on a singled Docker setup. To do so follow these instructions: We strongly recommend you run separate web and data containers The standalone container is extremely easy to configure, however has a couple of drawbacks You will need to stop your site when bootstrapping a new image You run through the db bootstrap only when needed Multisite is a fairly advanced topic, learn about hooks before attempting this. Understand hooks Discourse templates use pups, …

[bbparis (Bill Bird)]

Thanks @Cameron_D I’m going to check it

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Multisite may be the “best” way to have two sites, but if you’re used to having Plesk do all of the work, you’ll probably be better off having two droplets with simple installs.

I’d guess that you can pretty easily get two stand-alone sites set up in under an hour, but you might spend several hours fussing with multisite and still be frustrated.

[bbparis (Bill Bird)]

I see, thank you @pfaffman So, I will try the first step by installing Discourse on a Digital Ocean and see how much it is easy for me to get this step, later I will take care of the other forum.

By the way, Plesk will manage only mydomain.com (the main domain includes Wordpress) and Digital Ocean will have only subdomain.mydomain.com, but I will communicate the both through Wordpress plugin like discourse.org to give the visitors the possibilities to have just one username to use on the website.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

The wp-discourse plugin doesn’t care where the discourse server is running. You should follow the install cloud instructions rather than use the one click install.