# Programmatic configuration of a new Discourse site
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [January 27, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499 "2015-01-27T22:11:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ahuling](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ahuling)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/1 "2015-01-27T22:11:51Z")
Is it possible to programmatically configure a new site via the API?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/2 "2015-01-27T22:39:32Z")
What do you mean by “configure a new site”?
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### Author:  [@ahuling](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ahuling)
#### Post date: [January 28, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/3 "2015-01-28T15:17:57Z")
I’m most interested in setting up admin users, running through the steps in the [Admin Quick Start Guide](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/ADMIN-QUICK-START-GUIDE.md), and configuring SSO.
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### Author:  [@elberet](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elberet)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2015, 6:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/4 "2015-01-29T18:28:58Z")
If you’re fluent in Ruby, you can change pretty much everything by simply loading up the Discourse app in a Ruby script:
```plaintext
require "/path/to/discourse/config/environment"
SiteSetting.must_approve_users = true
u = User.new(username: "admin", email: "admin@example.com", ...)
u.save!
```
Obviously, this script must live and be executed inside Discourse’s docker container. Also, note that the first line loads the _entire_ Discourse app into the script and is fairly time consuming.
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### Author:  [@ahuling](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ahuling)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/5 "2015-01-29T18:55:52Z")
Perfect – thank you @elberet!
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### Author:  [@renoirb](https://meta.discourse.org/u/renoirb)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 2:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/6 "2015-04-30T02:33:31Z")
I’ve come across the same requirement to programatically configure Discourse configuration. Unfortunately for me, i’m not fluent in Ruby. There must be some magic somewhere that I didn’t get yet.
In [_discourse_ code, at `config/site_settings.yml`](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/config/site_settings.yml) which would be nice we could superseed via configuration files. So far, I know we can do a few things via a file we install from [_discourse\_docker_ from `samples/standalone.yml`](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker/blob/master/samples/standalone.yml), and that we can extend keys from [_discourse_ at `config/discourse_defaults.conf`](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/config/discourse_defaults.conf).
Is there a way to do the same with _site\_settings.yml_?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 2:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/7 "2015-04-30T02:39:44Z")
Site settings are all in the database so you can easily set overrides by using our object model.
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### Author:  [@renoirb](https://meta.discourse.org/u/renoirb)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/8 "2015-04-30T02:46:13Z")
I was hoping there was a way to inject settings so that I dont need to use database to do it. If there is none, its OK 🙂
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/9 "2015-04-30T02:49:00Z")
not following are you looking to provision 1000s of sites 🙂
you can change site settings in the UI, if you must pre-populate site settings you can add hook that runs post migration that forces a setting. you can not change defaults.
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### Author:  [@renoirb](https://meta.discourse.org/u/renoirb)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 10:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/programmatic-configuration-of-a-new-discourse-site/24499/10 "2015-04-30T22:32:17Z")
In fact i’m more interested in ways to [declare which authorize URL](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/config/site_settings.yml#L531) I can go against for S3 settings. And it seems that if I don’t use Amazon AWS, I can’t do it. (maybe I missed the config key).
On a related note, here’s [how I provision an app only container](https://meta.discourse.org/t/separating-redis-clusters-what-s-sent-into-redis-cached-views-sessions-both/28156/2).