The discussion revolves around the experience of self-hosting Discourse, with users sharing their insights on difficulty, migration, and common issues. forummaster seeks advice on managing a Discourse instance on a VPS, given their Linux experience. Jagster rates the difficulty as a 2, emphasizing ease with basic Linux knowledge. fokx rates initial setup as a 5 but maintenance as a 1, highlighting the simplicity of updates via ./launcher rebuild app and the ease of migration using rsync. KhoiUSA rates it a 7, noting occasional issues during updates, possibly due to hardware problems. thoka mentions the complexity of email setup and the benefits of plugin customization. Architect finds the initial setup challenging without command-line experience but appreciates the cost savings and control, though email setup remains a significant hurdle. Overall, self-hosting is seen as manageable with some technical know-how, offering control and cost benefits, but with potential challenges in email configuration and occasional update issues.
I am trying to decide on self-hosting Discourse on a VPS or paying for a fully managed instance.
I’ve been running Linux for 25 years, and I manage my own basic servers for a few personal applications like Nextcloud and Syncthing. I’m not a sysadmin, but I know my way around an Ubuntu server.
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the greatest level of difficulty managing a Discourse instance, what would you rate it?
If I ever need to migrate my Discourse instance to another VPS, is this a fairly seamless process, or is it problematic?
What are the most common problems you run into with self-hosting?
2 — with some but quite basic knowledge of shell, ubuntu and how internet works
I didn’t have anything and everything went as documented
Bugs and issues of adminlevel documentation, including too short, difficult or dev-level docs; quite rare situations after all and WordPress gives more gray hair
I would rate the first-time setup as 5 and maintaining as 1.
The initial setup/configuration process, though well documented, still requires caution with configuration file. Once the app.yml file is there, to update Discourse later on, the only thing you need is ./launcher rebuild app.
I would recommend you start with two-container setup, which will give you almost zero down-time during update.
Extremely easy. Just stop the container ./launcher stop app and use rsync -av /var/discourse new_host:/var/ to copy the entire folder and then run ./launcher rebuild app on the new host.
At most time it’s hassle-free. If you use some old and not-well-maintained third-part plugins/theme components, you may run into trouble after performing an update, but you can disable it anyway.
I would rate is a 7/10 for managing Discourse. Installing it and managing it is usually a breeze, but sometimes I do encounter issues that take time for me to troubleshoot, but it works out in the end. Plus, you have more control over your instance! I used to run my Discourse instance in the cloud but now I’m running it at home on my residential network.
Migration is a seamless process. What I do is create a new Discourse instance on my other server, then backup my already existing server, and then restore the backup on the new server. Then I have to reroute all the traffic.
A common issue I do encounter is sometimes when I rebuild my Discourse instance for an update or plugin install, it sometimes breaks itself. I’ve later found out the reason for this was that I was using a faulty mechanical hard drive, so it’s not entirely the Discourse’s fault.
If you want more control and are willing to take extra steps to make it happen, go with the self-hosted option.
The initial install process was a little challenging for me since have no background in ever installing anything by command line, but eventually figured that out.
Second main challenge is the e-mail sending/receiving setup.
I preferred the discourse hosting with discoursemail and team support is very helpful, but for new site with not a lot of traffic don’t need that and is more affordable to self-host with $12 a month server is less than the $100 a month standard plan.
However, have spent a lot of time figuring out how to make this work, so if you value your time a lot then discourse hosting may in fact be less expensive than managing the server yourself.