I have got a website into which I would like to integrate a forum seamlessly. Any customers should be able to read any posts in public categories, but would be required to login to post new questions or read posts in private categories. It’s clear to me how to redirect login requests from the forum to my website, but it’s not clear how to allow anonymous access and login users into the forum automatically when they log into the existing website. We saw some similar questions already being asked, but they are all at least a year old. Is there any solution available?
Secondly, can the forum layout be changed in a way that I can integrate it via iFrame into my website? This would allow us to use existing navigation, chat and other functionality and widgets when using the forum. This would only work though if the Navbar and similar components can be eliminated. I’m aware of the alternative way - redirecting the customer to a subdomain - but it’s not a good solution.
Or maybe you haven’t used discourse at all and don’t understand how it works?
No. The thing to do is get, make, or commission a theme component that makes discourse look like your site. Most users and most search engines don’t notice what the hostname is.
I’m certainly new to Discourse - hence I’m asking. But please continue if you know a way to integrate it into my website. If i turn off login_required, I understand that auth_immediately can not be used to automatically redirect the forum to my website for the login. A customer would need to login a second time and therefore doesn’t fulfil what I asked for in my initial post.
Is there another way or maybe you haven’t read my post in full?
Yes, playing with the theme to make it appear as if it’s my website is what I meant with just a redirect to a subdomain. But it’s sub-optimal as no functionality will be available when the user is on the forum - besides, the navigation controls can’t be replicated with just a few appearance changes. Surely that’s possible for a basic out of the box website, but that’s not what i have.
There are many intricacies. You really need to try it to see how it works. That’s what I would need to do to answer your question.
It can be done in a theme component. You can embed whatever functionally you want,though it does require some work and understanding discourse theme development.
If you want a forum that you can embed in an iframe you’ll need to use something else.