Hi All,
Just checking on the best/quickest approach of setting up a 2nd discourse forum on a new server. Can the existing Discourse host be cloned to a new server and the users/forum posts data removed directly from the database?
Is this a feasible approach instead of going through the process of a new discourse installation and configuring?
It is a mostly “trivial process” to install a new Discourse instance (takes only a few minutes, using the standard discourse install method) and then restore the data from a Discourse data dump (takes only a few minutes, depending on the size of your DB).
For average size DBs (data dumps), the entire process can take around 30 minutes, give or take; maybe a bit more if you are not in a rush.
I you wanted to have the second forum have the same categories and site settings as the first, you could restore the database from the first site and then muck with deleting users, but it’s almost certainly not worth it.
And to install Discourse, you could copy the app.yml from the first server and modify it, but mostly, just starting from scratch and running discourse-setup will be easier.