Silvanus is seeking guidance on migrating their production Discourse forum from an old 1GB DigitalOcean droplet to a new 1GB droplet while ensuring they’re on the correct code branch — initially unsure whether they’re on tests-passed or another branch. They also ask how to verify their current branch and whether stable is more appropriate for production. pfaffman confirms they’re on tests-passed, which is recommended for most users, and explains that downsizing requires creating a new droplet, installing Discourse, restoring a backup, and updating DNS — since disk resizing isn’t possible. Alternatively, they suggest upgrading to a 2GB droplet and adjusting memory settings via discourse-setup. Silvanus appreciates the advice, noting their NGO’s need to reduce costs, and confirms they’ve previously restored from backup. pfaffman provides specific instructions for switching to stable by editing app.yml, warning about indentation. Finally, Silvanus decides to remain on tests-passed for now, thanking everyone for their help.
I noticed that our forum which is currently “in production”, i.e. publicly available and in the use of its intended audience, seems to be in the beta development fork. Or actually I’m not sure, if it is. Its version is: v1.9.0.beta17 +95 Maybe that means it is already in tests-passed and not the main? If this is so, then this post is quite possibly unnecessary…
My question was: how to move from old 1GB Digital Ocean droplet into new 1GB DO Droplet and at the same time move to tests-passed… (Edit: I think there was some checks that the version number of the backup matches…)
My new question is: how do I check that I’m in the proper fork that I should be in? (Also: which should I be in?)
Edit: maybe the branch I should deploy for production is stable instead of tests-passed?
That’s the tests-passed version, that’s recommended for most folks. It gets all of the updates and latest features.
Since the disk size is smaller on the new 1GB droplet, you can’t just resize it. What you need to do is create a new droplet, install Discourse , download a backup from the old server, update your dns, restore the backup to the new one.
The other way to go is to resize to the new 2GB droplet and run discourse-setup to change the memory settings to take advantage of the additional RAM.
Thank you for the advice. I’ve reinstalled Discourse from a backup before, and I know how to do that. Because I thought I would have to switch from my current branch to something else, I came asking for help.
We have a very small NGO behind our forum - its only form of activity being the forum - and getting the costs down is really good, so I think we’re going to downsize a bit.