Right. That makes sense. And I think would be fine for me using mailgun.
I will understand all of this better if and when I start setting up a multisite!
3 Likes
Jumping in because I’m in a similar situation as @alltiagocom — I’ve got discourse installed on a smallish Hetzner server for my main community but have been thinking, in the background, of moving a few other Facebook groups to Discourse once I have got the hang of things.
I’m familiar with « Wordpress multisite » but I’ve understood that Discourse multisite is more involved. I was wondering what would be less of a headache, running two standalone sites (or more) or a multisite.
Any insight on this?
Multisite would definitely be less maintenance overhead so less headaches but YMMV
1 Like
For Discourse novices, I recommend just running two sites.
I made a topic for how to run multisite without a reverse proxy, but it’s out of date now.
I think all that needs to change is
can be replaced with the new
DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME_ALIASES: domain.com,other.domain.com
2 Likes
My two cents, after spending the whole day working on this with the help of my old notes, ChatGPT, Claude, Discourse’s AI Bot, and some topics shared here (and after taking notes and more notes about the whole process).
Everything seemed to be working just fine until I got to the point where I needed to add the reverse proxy. My first instance, which was working fine, wasn’t working. I asked a few more questions to Discourse’s AI bot, but since that’s my first day, it stopped working. It’s a limitation for new users of the bot. Claude, who was being super helpful, also stopped, because I’m on the free version. ChatGPT is the least reliable of all, so all replies from it, are always received by me with a LOT of hesitance…
Then I came to the forum again and started reading a few topics about it, some written by @pfaffman. That was the last straw. Too complex, too much technical terms for me to even understand what to ask.
Summary: my first instance was working, so I’m reverting it back to what it was (editing the app.yml file to what it was before the changes. I’m rebuilding as I type.
To be honest, for all the complexity, even though it would allow me add more communities after going through the first big obstacle, I don’t think that saving $4 a month for an extra community will be the end of the world. Since I already know how to set up a server in Hetzner and then install Discourse, I will stick to 2 communities now, pay the $8 for both, and move on. Considering I was paying $12 for one droplet with Digital Ocean a few months ago, I can do the effort of paying the same amount for 3 communities if I want to.
Regardless, I always find these adventures interesting, because I learn something new along the way, and in the end, at least I can say why I don’t want to do it, rather than just saying “I won’t do it, because I don’t know if I can do it”.
I appreciate the time and help all of you shared here, and hopefully this topic will help others who want to achieve what I was trying to.
Over and out!
6 Likes
This is exactly why I said You need to rethink your strategy, while what you were trying to achieve wasn’t impossible, because it has been done before, it requires significant understanding of discourse to be able to get right.
I’d recommend keep experimenting in your free time if you want to learn more about how discourse works, that’s how most of us here learned it.
8 Likes
It took me much longer than I care to admit to (mostly) figure it out!
4 Likes