Here’s where I’m at today: I’m wondering if I shouldn’t approach this differently than falling into my usual over-engineering and optimising everything trap. Why, will you ask? Because the more I dig through settings and the more I read here on Meta, the more I slide into cognitive overload and start despairing that I’ll ever find the time to sort all this out before… 2027 
So, I thought to myself, what would be another approach?
Another approach would be to start by pretty much copy-pasting the existing structure of the community on Facebook into Discourse, and go from there. One huge advantage I see that Discourse has is its flexibility: need a new category? Create it, and you can bulk-assign (correct me if I’m not mistaken) a heap of posts that should have been in it, had it previously existed. Subcategory should be top-level? Move it. Tag should be category? Convert, or if that’s not possible, create a new category and I’m sure you can bulk-assign said topics to it. Want to add a template to keep people in line in a given category? do it.
When I created the community on Facebook, I was already very much familiar with Facebook group functionalities (and they are much less extensive than Discourse’s). So, I was able to set up the group pretty well before the first members showed up.
Here, I have a potential pool of active members ready to set foot through the door, but I’m not familiar enough with the platform and its possibilities to really prepare everything the way I’d like to before “launch” (even if it’s a soft one), at least not within a timeframe that feels reasonable and with the energy I have available.
I have bounced ideas around in my head enough that I have a variety of possible scenarios available. I know I’m good at reacting to what I see playing out before me, and it’s much easier from an energy perspective (hi, ADHD) than trying to plan everything out ahead. Discourse comes pre-set with a lot of good things, so maybe I should start out extending some trust to the way it comes out of the box, knowing that of course there will be confusion but that I will not be alone in this, as there is already a community, part of which will certainly step up to be pioneers in this migration.
And as I’ve already spent a lot of time looking through functionalities, identifying decisions that need to be made, playing with category ideas, evaluating what should go in channels or topics, maybe once some real activity starts the path to take will become clear.
Has anybody taken this approach to migrate an existing community?
If I went this way, here’s what I’d start with:
- Welcome/Beginners category, for new members, orientation, basic questions: this would be a “translation” of our Beginners Facebook group, and it would also take care of all the “welcoming” and “orienting” we do in the main group.
- Support for FD: this would replicate our main facebook group, where pretty much all the activity is
- Veterinarians: replica of the vet group, though I think this would be the last to migrate, as the vet group on Facebook is perfectly viable (but as more vets join on Discourse, it will be good to have the space ready for them.
I’d start with things set up pretty liberally, particularly when it comes to tagging – try to encourage users to tag topics. I’ve already identified a collection of tags that will be useful for us to structure the community as it grows in Discourse, so we’d start by making those available and see what else shows up organically.
As time sees fit, we can start creating sub-categories in the main category (for grief support, for second-hand material, etc) – and with time, we’ll see which ones make sense and if any need to be promoted to proper categories at some point. Ideas for giving us more control over the “member journey”, like the Cat Files or prerequisites for asking for dosing advice can be introduced later.
Messenger backchannels can be replicated as is in Discourse, and we can “test” creating associated categories or group messaging live.
It’s funny, because the whole of the community that exists today grew like that. I started with something basic, a few rules, and as it evolved and grew, we introduced things.
So maybe this is also the way to go ahead with this migration.
I’d appreciate your thoughts, insights, experience on this “Dark Night of the Admin” moment 
But I don’t ever want to have go back on facebook.
