Installation by the book

Product Support Self-hosting

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Installation by the book

Jonathan5 is installing Discourse following official instructions to avoid potential issues. They have completed the following steps:

  • Installed Discourse using Docker on a Digital Ocean 2GB droplet (guide)
  • Set up Mailgun for sending email (guide)
  • Configured reply by email using the straightforward delivery method (guide)
  • Implemented bounce handling (guide)

They plan to avoid using third-party plugins and are seeking reassurance on their setup. osioke suggests that additional considerations depend on desired functionality or design changes. Jonathan5 is now looking into further customizations.

1

I’m trying to install Discourse in accordance with the most “official” instructions, to save bother in the long run. Here’s what I’ve done. It’s not all directly linked to from the installation instructions, but no.4 in particular seems very important, so I wonder: is there anything else that I need to consider?

  1. Installed using Docker on a Digital Ocean 2GB droplet: discourse/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub

  2. Mailgun for sending email: discourse/docs/INSTALL-email.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub

  3. Reply by email: Configure direct-delivery incoming email for self-hosted sites with Mail-Receiver (this seems much simpler and better than the Set up reply by email with POP3 polling which is linked to from the installation instructions).

  4. Bounce handling: Configure VERP to handle bouncing e-mails.

I will follow the informal advice for having a quiet life of not using third-party plugins. I saw, too late, advice to set DNS settings at the registrar rather than use Digital Ocean’s nameservers, but seeing as it works I don’t plan to change this.

Thanks in anticipation.

2

Anything else you’d need to consider boils down to what ever else you want to use your Discourse forum for. Is there a specific functionality you’d like? Or some design changes you’d want? Extra setups to the Discourse installation is usually based off answers to these.

3

Thanks for the reassurance. Now that I’ve got the basics nailed down, I’ll look into everything else! :slight_smile: