I’m running my own self-hosted Discourse instance, and I’m also active on several other Discourse communities. I’d like to request (or at least discuss) two related capabilities that currently feel hard to solve in a clean, official, and scalable way.
1) “Activity backup” across Discourse instances (cross-site mirroring to my own forum)
The goal
Whenever I create a new topic (and optionally replies) on another Discourse site, I want my own Discourse instance to automatically keep a copy (or a clearly attributed mirror) so I can:
maintain a personal archive of my participation across communities,
search and reference my past discussions in one place,
avoid losing history if posts/accounts disappear on other sites.
Current problem
In practice this is difficult to do reliably without admin-level control of the other forums, and without creating duplicated/spammy content. Even when some workarounds exist, they are usually fragile or not standardized between sites.
What I’m asking for
Is there any plan for an official, supported approach to “cross-instance activity backup”, such as:
a standardized way to export/sync a user’s own authored content to another Discourse instance,
optional mirroring of topics/replies with strong attribution and canonical links,
a permission model that respects source-site rules (e.g., only sync what I authored and what is publicly visible).
I’d like a single interface where I can subscribe to multiple Discourse sites and view a unified stream of:
Latest / New / Unread
watched categories/tags across sites
notifications, mentions, bookmarks
ideally with per-site authentication, and the ability to open/reply/like in context
Current problem
Today, using multiple Discourse communities means juggling many tabs and accounts. Community-made solutions can sometimes aggregate content, but they tend to be fragile, hard to scale beyond a couple sites, and not something I can rely on long term.
What I’m asking for
Would Discourse consider an official “multi-instance reader” (web UI or app), or at least a supported framework/API pattern that enables this reliably?
Why this matters
It improves productivity for users active across many Discourse communities.
It enables personal knowledge management and long-term archiving of one’s own contributions.
An official approach could reduce fragmentation and avoid brittle workarounds.
If there are existing discussions or roadmap items related to either “cross-instance activity backup” or “multi-site unified reader,” I’d love pointers. I’d also be happy to help clarify requirements, propose an MVP, or test solutions.
Just a tip: It’s better if you spread out multiple ideas/requests over multiple topics. That way, people can vote better and the subject is scoped nicely.
If you’re not an admin of the instance in question, no, there are no plans.
Your best option would be to regularly export a backup of your account from /my/preferences/account and build a way to migrate this into your own instance.
On an admin level, the activitypub plugin can do some of this but it’s more of a site feature than something individual users can utilize.
Our Discourse Hub mobile app (Share your feedback about the 🆕 iOS Discourse Hub app) does some of this (see a list of sites you’re signed up on, get notifications, see some hot topics)… but in the end it’s important for a lot of communities to see people on their site directly, so you will need to visit a site you’re signed up for to interact. We have considered doing more of this beyond the app before, but there are no concrete plans.
My English is not very good, so I used a plugin for translation and formatting, which made it feel a bit lengthy. Maybe next time I should use a more concise and appropriate form.
For cross-instance activity backup: understood that without admin access there are no plans for automated mirroring. The /my/preferences/account export suggestion is helpful. Do you know if there’s any documented or stable format/API intended for programmatically consuming that user export (or a recommended migration path) so a user can import their own content into another Discourse instance?
Re ActivityPub: agreed it’s more of a site-level feature today. If there’s ever interest, a “user-centric” mode (sync only my public authored posts, with canonical links/attribution) would be exactly what I’m looking for.
For the unified multi-site experience: I’ll check out Discourse Hub — the notification + “hot topics” overview already sounds useful. If there’s a place to track ideas, I’d be happy to file a feature request specifically for a richer read-only aggregated feed (across sites I’m signed into), while keeping interaction on the original site as you described.
Thanks for the detailed answer — that helps a lot.
Given the constraints (no admin access on the source instances), I’m going to narrow the scope to a very small “personal activity backup” MVP that’s explicitly user-centric and non-disruptive to communities:
Only archive content authored by me
Only archive what is publicly visible
Every archived item includes canonical link to the original, source site name, timestamp, and attribution
Interaction stays on the original site; my instance is just a searchable personal archive
The rough MVP pipeline would be: periodically export my account data, parse out my authored posts/topics, de-duplicate, and then post “backup entries” into my own Discourse via API with a consistent attribution header.
A couple of questions to make sure I’m not reinventing something incorrectly:
Is the user export format considered stable enough for tooling, or is there any recommended/official approach for third-party parsing of the export over time?
Is there any existing community plugin/project aiming at a “personal archive” workflow (even if read-only / topic-only)?
Also, I’m curious: do other users/community operators here have a similar need (personal archive / cross-instance activity log)? If yes, I’d love to hear your use cases — it would help justify a more formal approach or a documented pattern.
Thanks again — happy to share my MVP notes or repo once it’s in a usable shape if that’s useful to others.