Using Discourse as a personal Journal?

I have an instance of Discourse which I use as a public Blog, resumé (CV), and also has private sections in it which I use as a notebook and personal ‘wiki’, ideas bank, and even Kanban.

Recently I also started (trying to) keep a journal, simply by creating a Topic titled YYYY.MM.DD and making some notes, scanning and uploading documents etc…

I just wondered if anyone else out in the Discourse community is using Discourse in this way?

If I was going to use it like this long term I’d perhaps want to build a theme component or plugin which made journalling easier:

  • auto-fill the Topic title with today’s date
  • sort that Topic strictly by Topic creation date, not date of most recent post.

what else?

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There is an existing blogging plugin for Discourse. You should look into that. I think it just changes the style to look more like a blog.

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Cool! I use DIscourse this way for myself too, and I love it.

Discourse for Teams provides a weekly update topic for each member of the team. It is generated automatically each year and the team member can then add replies each week. If they forget, they are automatically sent a reminder.

With Discourse you can also use various features to make it easy to keep a journal. For example using topic templates to set up a category so new topics have some info prefilled. I also like Discourse-reply-template-component which lets you add a reply automagically with some info prefilled - it supports dates as well. Then add a bookmark with a reminder for when you want to next add a reply, and you’re golden. :sunny:

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I am using it in the exact same way. I “blog” about issues I have come across in my professional life, and make them public, however I have a boatload of topics in a private category that help me keep track of things.

My Broken Computer

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I also use Discourse as a blog. I use it in combination with Blogger. Everything just fits together perfectly. :slight_smile:

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Did the “featured topic” profile functionality trickle down from this feature? (from Discourse for Teams?)

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Can you explain more about this integration?

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I use both services synonymously. If Blogger wasn’t owned by Google and heavily integrated with their services (which are practically critical to the existence of my life :rofl:), I would be using Discourse exclusively. Both services have their pros and cons.

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Sort of. I keep track of my work at Discourse in a PM that I’ve sent to myself. I bookmark the PM with a reminder to update it at the end of every day. My PM isn’t encrypted, but an encrypted PM that a user sends to themselves seems like it would make a good journal or diary.

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I use Discourse as a blogging platform, and, honestly, it deserves more attention.

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Woah! I never actually took Discourse in a way that it could be used as a personal journal, this would be very useful in making documentations about logs, especially in big communities!
I’m willing to try this!

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