WesPenre reported that their Discourse site, wespenreboards.com, was down due to certificate errors in browsers like Brave and Firefox, suggesting an expired Let’s Encrypt certificate. agungor confirmed the cert had expired and pointed to documentation. WesPenre admitted lacking technical knowledge and revealed the site was built by a former Discourse Support person and hosted on Digital Ocean. After attempting to create an app.yml file (which doesn’t exist in their two-container setup), JammyDodger guided them through a rebuild using ./launcher bootstrap web_only commands via SSH. After running the commands, the site temporarily came back online, confirmed by JammyDodger signing up to test. WesPenre confirmed full functionality and thanked JammyDodger. Later, when the issue recurred, JammyDodger asked for full console logs. WesPenre sought help locating logs, and after sharing launcher script content, JammyDodger resolved the issue via PM — it was a MaxMind-related error, fixed by commenting out the problematic section. Benjamin_D noted certificates expire every 90 days but should auto-renew, and JammyDodger shared maintenance tips for keeping the server updated. The issue was ultimately resolved without needing admin access or deeper configuration changes.
When people try to log in, depending on the browser, they get the following messages:
BRAVE:
This site can’t be reached
The webpage at https://wespenreboards.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
ERR_FAILED”
FIREFOX:
"Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead
Firefox detected an issue and did not continue to wespenreboards.com. The website is either misconfigured or your computer clock is set to the wrong time.
It’s likely the website’s certificate is expired, which prevents Firefox from connecting securely. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details."
Thanks for the reference. Sorry, but this tech language is like Greek to me. I read the instructions, but I’m at a loss. Don’t even know where to start. I have no foreknowledge. Not sure what to do…
I didn’t even know I had a certificate. Isn’t there an easy way to just update it?
I just noticed that my Discourse does not have an app.yml file, so I created one (see screenshot). However, the new yml file does not show up in the directory (again, see screenshot). What to do? Should I enter certain information to the file? If so, what should I add?
If I remember rightly, you have a two-container set-up so you won’t have an app.yml, as neither of your containers are called app.
Have you done a rebuild of your Discourse recently? I think letsencrypt should use that as an opportunity to renew your certificates.
If you’re on a two-container set-up I think you can do this by using the ‘access console’ on your Digital Ocean droplet page for an easy way to SSH into your server, and then:
It seems like everything is working as intended, so you can probably just delete that test account. I don’t think the admin UI will tell me anything useful in this case (though we can always sign me up for another one in the future if you need something else )
Though, just to check, is everything working as expected now?
I have the certificate issue again, and I used the commands above to try to renew, but I got an error message on my console (Digital Ocean). See attachment. And I still can’t log into Discourse. How should I proceed?