Hello! So I’ve been trying out Discourse and I really like it so far. While browsing my forum on my phone I saw a random notification that said I could download an app of the forum. I tried that and evidently there’s an app of my forum now on my phone. Very cool! My questions are:
How does it work? Where can I go to learn more about how it works? I have looked through my settings and I can’t seem to find any place to control the app. Heck, I can’t even find how to download it again.
My forum name is “The AVFX Forum”, but when the app downloaded, the name under the icon is just “The”. Where can I change that? It being just called “The” is obviously pretty lame.
How can I make the existence of this “app feature” more obvious to my future community members? As I said, I randomly found out about it through a notification, and haven’t been able to find it since.
Discourse works as a Progressive Web App (PWA). Not only on your phone but the same works on your Desktop too. You can find an install button on the right side of the URL bar in the chrome browser.
Go to Settings->Basic Setup->short title to change the title for your app.
You can convert your discourse PWA to an android app and upload it to the Playstore. You may use bubblewrap or PWABuilder to convert your PWA to an android app.
Thank you very much! Changing the “short title” worked! If I did convert my PWA to an Android/IOS app, would I need to worry about updating anything in the future? Meaning, if I do changes to my Forum’s styling/theme/components, would my Android app automatically respond accordingly? Or would I have to go through the process of converting my PWA every time I do an update?
Yes, the installed PWA loads your Discourse when the users open it and downloads the latest version. Unless the user is offline and it will browse the latest cached version from the last visit.
Other stuff, like title, logo and accent color in the splash page are cached in the app and update in the background periodically without user interaction.
The normal workflow is the one you used. Discourse will prompt a user to install the PWA when there is enough engagement using a series of metrics.
If you want to promote it, users can install the app directly by going to the browser menu and clicking on “Install SiteName” on supported platforms.
Yes, Your app will respond to the styles. You don’t have to update your app every time. The whole point of PWA is to manage the app on a server and load when a user makes a request. You can give an update to your playstore app if you later decide to change the URL or app icon or splash image…etc.
