# New customer setup

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-customer-setup/266194
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 25, 2023, 12:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-customer-setup/266194 "2023-05-25T12:55:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2023, 1:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-customer-setup/266194/3 "2023-05-25T13:10:55Z")

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Welcome here, Paul!

> [@lawblogger](#):
>
> will Discourse host using our URL or are there other prefixes or suffixes that must be included in the URL?

Only Basic plans have a `.discourse.group` domain.  
Custom domain (to be understood as: any domain you own) starts from the Standard ($100/month) plan. 🙂

> [@lawblogger](#):
>
> Our community relies upon searching for experts.

Can you clarify what would be the goal of your forum? Is it a support forum?  
How do you define an “expert”? What are their purpose?

Discourse has a group feature: [https://meta.discourse.org/g](https://meta.discourse.org/g)

You could have an Experts group and put your expert users in it. You could then choose whether the group can be mentioned by other users or not. Like @lawblogger, but with a group name instead.

We also have an official assignment plugin that allow assigning topics or posts to certain people or groups:

> [@Discourse Assign](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-assign/58044):
>
> discourse2Summary Discourse Assign provides the ability to assign topics and individual posts (both private and public) to a user or group.open_bookInstall Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately.person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator (for configuration), members of allowed groups (for using assignments) discourse2 Hosted by us? This plugin is available on our Business and Enterprise p…

But it’s hard to recommend features if we don’t have a better picture of what you are trying to achieve. 🙂

> [@lawblogger](#):
>
> As users search for experts by name, does the search feature include subject line and content areas?

The search has filters.

[https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=group:team](https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=group:team) will return all posts from members of the “team” group.

In the same way, [https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=@codinghorror) will return every posts from the user “codinghorror”.

> [@lawblogger](#):
>
> does Discourse include a paying feature for membership? Do they use [stripe.com](http://stripe.com) to process annual membership fees for our community?

There’s an official plugin that could fit: [Discourse Subscriptions Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-subscriptions/140818)  
It allows users to pay to access a certain group.  
Your forum could have most categories locked for users not belonging to this group, so subscribing would unlock most of your forum’s content.

* * *

ℹ Note that the use of plugins is restricted for certain plans. Details are here: [Plugin directory | Discourse - Civilized Discussion](https://discourse.org/plugins).

The assign plugin is available starting with the Business plan (assign).

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