I think the issue for myself, and many others, is that my site is relatively small; docker support isn’t really there and we really just get access to FTP to upload file structure. I’m not expecting that tomorrow that this becomes a reality, but the vast majority of shared hosts (for smaller sites like my own) don’t offer expanded capabilities to really support Discourse.
Just curious if there are thoughts around this (I’m not advocating for a specific way!) to accomodate the many people who have the ability to set up Wordpress, but then aren’t able to expand that use to Discourse.
You can use a subdomain and get your Discourse instance hosted here by the project team. I think there’s another Discourse hoster too, third party. EDIT: And here’s the link to that third party service.
If you can’t get ssh access, and you’re not dealing with a service that specifically hosts discourse, then it’s not going to happen. The technical issues make this a hard limitation.
The issue with people who would like to use their current shared webhosting for discourse seems to come down to just a few things.
They aren’t savvy to the ability to host a subdomain of your main site elsewhere, with the result being the end user has the same experience.
They don’t have the tech know how to install discourse via ssh on their own vps/dedi.
Budgetary considerations.
The solution I’ve been offering people is to provide clean installs on a relatively inexpensive vps. If they would like to consolidate their projects onto one server, then I offer a service to enable you to host your php/html5 (wordpress blogs, for instance) sites from the same vps.
My latest install included multiple discourse instances working alongside wordpress blogs. I setup the system and ran through the commands necessary to setup additional sites by doing the first wordpress install via skype share. I work with the customer to get them where then need to be, independent of their current skill level.
To wrap up, shared hosting option would be nice, but is not currently available through nearly all major providers. There is hosting specifically for discourse, via this main site, and Communiteq (formerly DiscourseHosting). If you’re looking for a cheaper route, and a way to run wordpress and/or php/html5 sites alongside discourse, I can setup a vps for your needs.
The problem is maintaining it. If something happens and they honestly don’t know the workings behind the software, then they’re going to have a bad experience trying to fix it, short of hiring someone to do it, ie shared hosting.
I think perhaps something will be built in the future. A hybrid of shared hosting and VPS. Where you have the power of VPS but with the shared hosting sysadmin.
Not to mention maintaining it and being responsible for everything else, like VPS security.
I’m pretty sure the word your looking for is managed VPS hosting. It’s available by many providers, but the cost increases significantly, depending mostly on the level of management included. On the security bit, if a client doesn’t mention a want for ssh keys, I automatically setup fail2ban without a second thought. There really does need to be a minimum level of security regardless of what is being served. Having simple passwords is something I wouldn’t even want to touch. If the client wouldn’t approve of switching to a complex password or ssh keys, I’d have to decline doing any work on the machine.
