In a support thread regarding the deprecated Discourse Encrypt plugin, user hmmmnotsure asks if they can safely update their community after four months of inactivity. They propose setting allow_new_encrypted_pms = false and allow_decrypting_pms = true before updating, citing a previous failed attempt that damaged custom site work.
Expert pfaffman suggests the previous failure was likely due to Ember changes rather than the plugin itself, recommending a staging site test. When asked about continuing encryption or removing the plugin after a grace period, pfaffman confirms that waiting several months to upgrade is acceptable, noting the plugin is already broken in current versions link. Following an impact assessment, hmmmnotsure concludes the risk is low and plans to remove the plugin on a staging environment before running updates.
Hi,
We are still using Discourse Encrypt plugin. We are going to phase it out.
We haven’t run updates in 4 months. Can I now set:
allow_new_encrypted_pms = false
allow_decrypting_pms = true
and then run the updates after a backup? Would having the deprecated Discourse Encrypt plugin cause any updates issue?
PS: earlier, we tried the updates without turning off allow_new_encrypted_pms and it wrecked all the custom work we had on the site.
That’s probably unrelated to the Discourse Encrypt plugin. There have been many changes to Ember.
I’d probably spin up a staging site, restore the backup and see what changes are required to your “custom work”.
Thank you, @pfaffman !!
If we have to continue encryption for Private Messages, is there a way within Discourse? Or is customisation (is it even feasible?) the only option?
Also, if we can’t do encryption, I want to give my customers at least 3 months to decrypt/save their messages before removing the plugin. Can we do that? I mean, can we remove the plugin after 3-4 months?
Sure. Wait 4 more months to upgrade. 
Posts in the plugin topic say that it’s broken, so I wouldn’t try upgrading until you’re ready to remove it.
Thank you so much for sharing this discussion. We did an impact assessment and found that it was low. So now we are planning to remove the plugin on stage and run the updates.
Big thanks!