# Installing Plugins in Discourse Development Install
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [September 27, 2017, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902 "2017-09-27T22:16:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/1 "2017-09-27T22:16:37Z")
Hello All!
I’m pretty new to Discourse. Could someone please give me some steps to installing plugins in the development install of Discourse? Would this be the same as the production methods? Thanks for the help! 🙂
Austin
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/2 "2017-09-27T22:37:59Z")
I usually clone the plugin repository locally, and then create a symlink in the discourse/plugins directory.
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/3 "2017-09-27T22:39:20Z")
Unfortunately, I don’t have the compatibility to clone plugins locally. Are there any other methods that I could use? Thanks! 😉
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/4 "2017-09-27T22:40:55Z")
You mean you have your dev environment setup on a file system without symlinks?
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/5 "2017-09-27T22:42:03Z")
I’m new to all of this. Can you please explain to me what symlinks is?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/6 "2017-09-27T22:44:43Z")
I really don’t mean to sound rude, but I feel running discourse in dev would require enormous amount of learning for you, start with some basic books on Linux and Ruby
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2017, 10:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/7 "2017-09-27T22:46:13Z")
I’m familiar with using Discourse, just not the backend (installing, plugins, etc.)
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 1:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/8 "2017-09-28T01:02:07Z")
How did you setup Discourse without having access to git to clone it? Plugins operate the same way in a dev environment.
I think you will have a major uphill battle here if you are unable to do the basics necessary to have a true development instance operational.
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 9:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/9 "2017-09-28T21:28:00Z")
Do I follow the same steps to install plugins as in the stable version of Discourse?
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 9:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/10 "2017-09-28T21:35:08Z")
No, probably not.
How have you installed your development version of Discourse?
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 9:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/11 "2017-09-28T21:58:38Z")
Yes I have, however, it keeps going down, so I’m checking with my host 🙂
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 10:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/12 "2017-09-28T22:10:07Z")
If you have a “host”, then it doesn’t sound like you have a proper development environment… Typically a development environment would be running on your own computer.
You should really read the documentation in #howto:devs - but as people have said above it’s quite a complicated thing to get going. If you really want to try, start here:
> [@Contributing to Discourse development](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-development-contribution-guidelines/3823):
>
> bookmark This guide is designed for those who wish to contribute to the Discourse open-source project, detailing the setup and conventions necessary for effective collaboration. person_raising_hand Required user level: While anyone can contribute code, you will need to be familiar with Ruby and JavaScript. Summary This documentation will cover the following: Setting up your development environment Understanding where to begin contributing Creating and working with Discourse plugins Co…
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/13 "2017-09-28T22:11:07Z")
We used this to install it onto our Ubuntu 16.04 VPS server: [Install Discourse on Ubuntu or Debian for Development](https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-install-discourse-on-ubuntu-for-development/14727)
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/14 "2017-09-28T22:45:45Z")
Ok, well in that case you can navigate to the discourse directory on the command line and then run something like:
```plaintext
cd plugins
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved
```
and it should work
Be very, very careful running a development instance if your VPS is accessible to the public - many security features are entirely disabled when running in development mode. For example, anyone can log in as any user without knowing their password!
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### Author:  [@hexa\_tech](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hexa_tech)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2017, 2:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/15 "2017-09-29T02:41:01Z")
oh really? I never knew about that! Going back to the plugins, is that all I run? Do I need to shutdown and restart the VPS?
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2017, 5:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-plugins-in-discourse-development-install/70902/16 "2017-09-29T05:39:39Z")
> [@hexa\_tech](#):
>
> oh really? I never knew about that!
It sounds like you should take a backup, remove your development install, [reinstall as a supported Docker-based production install](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md) and restore the backup 🙂