On 2025-06-25T04:00:00Z, we hosted an AMA-style session with the incredible team behind custom design, development, and migration at Discourse.
This is the team that makes your Discourse instance look awesome, work brilliantly, and fit your needs.
Panelists
- Jamie – Director of Customer Projects
- Dave – Director of Product
- Coco – Migrations Team Lead
- Jeff – Engineering Manager
- Mark – Engineering Manager
- Gabriel – Software Engineer
- Derek – Customer Projects Designer
- Danielle (Host) – Customer Success Manager
What Does the Customer Projects Team Do?
Our dedicated team supports Enterprise customers with:
- Custom themes and component design
- Plugin and API development
- Complex platform migrations
- Ongoing support and optimization
It’s not just customizing Discourse—it’s about building the community you imagined, integrating with your systems, and making it seamless.
@mcwumbly, Director of Product
Migrate with Confidence
Whether you’re moving from a forum, a chat tool, or even a CSV file, our team handles data migration start to finish.
When we say any platform, we mean it—even Slack, Rocket.Chat, or plain text files.
We work closely with each customer to guide them through the migration process and make it as easy as possible. We take care of everything.
@cocococosti, Migrations Team Lead
One standout? A Slack migration where we used AI to generate topic titles from conversations to keep content readable and organized.
Learn more about this complex migration in the replay!
Highlights & Takeaways
Every new request is a chance to evaluate: should this become a core feature, a plugin, or remain custom-built?
@featheredtoast, Engineering Team Lead
Enterprise customizations don’t just serve one customer—they often uncover ways to improve Discourse for everyone. Simulating 1.3 billion pageviews helped us catch edge-case performance issues—benefiting all Discourse users.
@jamie.wilson, Director of Customer Projects
Some of our most useful features start as one-off customer requests. The livestream plugin, for example, began as a bespoke project—then evolved through multiple iterations to become a full-featured, open-source tool now available to everyone.
We got to the point where a plugin, which was initially for one person, has become generally useful.
@jamie.wilson
Built by Gabriel, a member of Mark’s team, the discourse-custom-topic-lists plugin was created for a customer who needed a filtered topic list tailored by category and tags. While still in its early stages, it’s a great example of how internal teams collaborate to build scalable, open-source-ready tools.
It’s still experimental… but it was a really cool example of a customer wanting something, and us thinking—this could be something we open source.
@markvanlan
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
Got a project in mind? Curious if something is possible? We’d love to hear from you.
Reach out anytime: team@discourse.org
Or talk to your CSM—we’re happy to coordinate!
Even if it doesn’t lead to a project, we’re always happy to chat. Some of our best ideas started as casual conversations.
Resources Shared
- Discourse Discover (Live Examples)
- Jobs at Discourse (Upcoming designer and engineering roles!)
- Webinar Replay: Getting Buy-In for Your Community
