Restricting Profile Visibility for Low Trust Level Users: A lively discussion emerged around the new feature restricting profile visibility for low-trust-level users. Robin.Grant raised concerns about its impact on private communities, and tobiaseigen shared potential workarounds. The team acknowledged the need for further tweaks. Read more.
Flood of Password Reset Requests: ale-re reported an issue with bots exploiting the /about page to generate password reset requests. The solution involved enabling the login required setting. Read more.
Docker Rate Limit Error on Rebuild: LotusJeff encountered rate limit issues during a rebuild. The problem was traced to IPv6 configurations on DigitalOcean, and disabling IPv6 resolved the issue. Read more.
Twitch Clips Embed Issue: RGJ identified a bug with embedding Twitch clips due to incorrect parent parameters. The issue appears to be related to Twitch’s embed code. Read more.
Signup Issues with hCaptcha: A misconfiguration of hCaptcha keys caused signup failures. tobiaseigen provided guidance and submitted a pull request to improve admin interface warnings. Read more.
Enter vs. Shift+Enter in Chat: A debate on whether Enter should submit messages or create new lines in chat led to a planned update to make this behavior configurable. joffreyjaffeux is working on the implementation. Read more.
Avatars Overlapping Focus State on Mobile: NateDhaliwal reported a visual issue with avatars overlapping the focus state on mobile. The problem was confirmed across multiple themes. Read more.
Simplifying Profile Picture Changes: A feature request to streamline profile picture updates was discussed, with Lilly suggesting a theme component by Don. Read more.
Glimmer Topic List Hides Solved Checkbox: Lilly reported that the glimmer topic list mode setting hides the solved status in topic lists. The issue is under review. Read more.
Profile Click Bug in Chat: MihirR identified a bug where clicking a user’s name in chat caused the interface to break. joffreyjaffeux confirmed the issue and plans to address it in January. Read more.
Details Expanding from Bottom: A bug with the “Hide Details” feature was reported by Moin, who provided a video demonstration. The issue appears to depend on browser window size. Read more.
AI-Powered Spam Detection: sam shared updates on the AI spam detection system, which successfully caught all spam over the weekend. Custom instructions were key to its success. Read more.
All AI Features Available on Standard and Business Plans: Discourse announced that all AI features are now accessible on Standard and Business hosting plans. Read more.
Solved Finder Button for Staff: Don proposed a feature to help staff quickly identify solutions in lengthy topics. The idea received positive feedback. Read more.
Control Section Expansion in Docs Plugin: jrgong suggested adding controls to the Docs Categories plugin to manage whether sections are expanded or collapsed by default. Read more.
Graph of Cheers History: ethandacat proposed a feature to visualize a user’s cheer history, akin to GitHub’s contribution heatmap. Read more.
Best Wishes for 2025: BrianC shared a heartfelt message wishing the community a happy new year and expressing appreciation for Discourse. Read more.
Thanks for Easy Installation: Jagster praised the relatively smooth installation process for Discourse, comparing it favorably to other platforms. Read more.
Do users properly use categories?
A lively discussion led by wellbing-go explored how users often miscategorize topics. Suggestions included simplifying category structures and forcing category selection before composing posts. Insights from noahl highlighted the benefits of radically reducing categories, as seen in the Wix forum.
Do you use Discord and Discourse? Saif initiated a conversation about running communities on both platforms. Participants like rburkej and noahl shared their experiences, emphasizing the complementary roles of Discord for real-time interaction and Discourse for structured discussions.
Enhancing appeal with image previews MihirR asked about improving the image upload interface. lindsey revealed that a WYSIWYG composer is under development, promising real-time rendering of images and formatting.
How to hide myself from /u page? copymonopoly sought advice on hiding their profile from the user directory. The solution involved disabling the user directory feature and using the leaderboard as a replacement.
Redirect to subscription page Moin suggested using a theme component to redirect non-subscribers to a subscription page, offering a seamless user experience.
AI-powered Spam detection
The Discourse team introduced an experimental AI-based spam detection feature. sam and Moin discussed its implementation and resolved a toggle-related bug.
Write out smarter dates with AI Saif announced the Smart Dates feature, which converts human-readable dates into timezone-friendly formats. Feedback from CocoQuark highlighted areas for improvement.
Full name at Sign Up went missing: A bug where the full name field disappeared during sign-up was identified. Osama provided a fix, and users confirmed the issue was resolved after updating.
Watermark Image: Arkshine introduced a new theme component that automatically adds customizable watermarks to user-uploaded images. The component supports both image and QR code watermarks, with extensive configuration options.
Homepage Blocks: nolo shared a theme component for building custom homepages with configurable block components, combining features from right sidebar blocks and custom homepage routes.
Current Projects - January 2025: mcwumbly shared updates on ongoing projects, including admin configuration pages for site appearance, a new default theme, and a one-click spam detector.
Replacing goo.gl links: pfaffman shared a script to replace deprecated goo.gl links in forum posts, ensuring functionality after Google’s shutdown of the service.
Discourse Rewind 2024: joffreyjaffeux introduced an experimental feature called “Discourse Rewind,” which provides users with a personalized summary of their activity over the past year. The community compared it to Spotify Wrapped, and feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
Why are bubbles blinking around my avatar?: Users reported blinking bubbles around their avatars, which were linked to the Discourse Rewind feature. jordan-vidrine explained the visual effect was designed to attract attention to the new feature.
Discourse Self Hosting: A discussion on self-hosting Discourse, with links to guides and alternative setups like Docker Compose.
Locked out of my forum after restore: A user shared their experience of being locked out after a restore. supermathie provided troubleshooting steps, including using the admin backdoor login.
Discourse now supports multiple drafts:lindsey announced a long-awaited feature allowing users to save multiple drafts simultaneously. This improvement was widely celebrated by the community as a significant quality-of-life enhancement.
PostgreSQL 15 update:mwaniki detailed the upgrade to PostgreSQL 15, including warnings for large databases and instructions for admins. The discussion included troubleshooting tips and updates to address issues encountered during the upgrade.
“Hide my public profile” is in the wrong place:RGJ suggested moving the “Hide my public profile” setting from the “Interface” tab to a more logical location, such as “Security” or “Profile.” lindsey confirmed this feedback would be acted upon.
Unpacking Discourse 3.4 – In this topic, Discourse and the community explored the new admin experience, simplified signup flows, mobile improvements, and AI-powered spam detection. Check out the discussion starting in post 1 and also visit the companion blog post for background.
Quote Callouts – Arkshine introduced this theme component that adds Obsidian‐style callouts as an alternative for markdown quotes. View the discussion in post 1 and explore the GitHub repository plus the installation guide.
Discourse Density Toggle – This component lets users change their viewing density (default, cozy, or compact). Read jordan-vidrine’s introduction in post 1 and see the repository as well as the installation instructions.
Enable Dev Tools Button – A handy theme component from NateDhaliwal that adds a shortcut to open the developer tools directly from the site header. Discover more in post 1 and check out its GitHub repo alongside the how-to guide.
Custom Lightbox – Enjoy modern swipe gestures, fullscreen mode, and better mobile image viewing with this theme component. Get started by reading post 1 for details.
DarkPixlz’s Modern Theme – A fresh take on modern forum aesthetics, this theme (discussed in post 125) has undergone tweaks such as renaming to remove problematic punctuation.
Dark/Light Mode Toggle Now Available in Core – Osama announced that the new dark/light mode toggle is now built into Discourse core. Read all about it in post 1; note that further insights on handling button text in dark mode were also shared. read more
3.4.0: Major Release – Celebrating major improvements including AI spam detection and a consistent admin experience, this topic by Saif lays out the new features in post 1.
3.4.0.beta4: Redesigned Emojis, Exporting User Data, Flagging Illegal Content and More – Detailed by Saif in post 1, this discussion outlines enhancements in emoji design, GDPR features, and updates to content flagging.
Announcing: AI Web Artifacts – A major refactor of the AI system was announced by sam in post 42. For context, get additional background from the companion documentation.
Site Offline After Rebuild (4th Feb 2025) – Users encountered an instance‐wide outage following a rebuild; david stepped in with a fix in post 7, and further troubleshooting details are available. Be sure to also check the guidelines for rebuild issues.
PostgreSQL 15 Update – This discussion (post 69) covers troubleshooting steps for a failed database shutdown during the PostgreSQL upgrade. For complete instructions, refer to the official PostgreSQL update thread.
Increased CPU Usage Since 3.4.0.beta4-dev Upgrade – In post 5, sam reported that a mini_racer update caused high CPU load, and a subsequent rollback restored normal performance; check out the mini_racer revert PR for more details.
Upgrade Failed Spectacularly – When a rebuild error arose, users shared error logs and troubleshooting tips in post 1.
Can’t Reach Web Server After Update to 3.4 – david rallied to help when users reported access issues – see post 1 and further diagnostics in the discussion.
My Discourse Emojis Don’t Work When I Change My Domain – A peculiar glitch affecting emoji rendering was resolved by running a post “rebake” operation. See post 1 for the fix and additional instructions (e.g. use the rake posts:rebake command).
Site Offline Since Update – pg15 Upgrade Failed – In post 1, a subgroup of users showed that an unclean database shutdown could leave the forum inaccessible. Solutions and diagnostic steps were detailed by david.
Add Author to Recent Posts – For enhanced context on recent activity, this topic (post 1) discusses showing authors on recent posts.
Improve New User Onboarding by Muting/Following Categories – StefanoCecere proposed a plugin solution to let newcomers select their interests and automatically mute or follow relevant categories. Take a look at post 1 for his ideas.
Discourse Update Error: Your Docker Installation Is Not Working Correctly – Users reported errors related to Docker configurations in post 1; advice included logging in to Docker and checking credentials.
Discourse Rebuild Fails Due to Unclean Shutdown – mwaniki provided helpful steps to ensure the PostgreSQL database shuts down cleanly. See post 1 for his recommended checklist.
Missing Images at Meta.discourse.org – A disruption in image display was discussed in post 1; after changes to custom configurations, the issue should now be resolved.
More Than 3 Million Enqueued Jobs in Sidekiq? – When excessive background jobs cluttered Sidekiq, zogstrip explained the cause and shared details in post 14.
Send a Message to Trust Level 0 (Only) Users – For targeted messaging, this discussion in post 1 outlines techniques to reach TL0 users.
How to Change the Logo in the Bottom Right Corner of the Avatar? – In post 1, users discussed how to adjust group flair images so they appear correctly on member avatars.
Migrating Small Community from Discord to Discourse – iSayYippeeKiYay shared challenges and pointers for moving a small Discord community (about 50 members) to a new Discourse forum. Dive into the discussion in post 1 for export and conversion hints.
#Developer Guides / Dev
Discourse Toolkit to Render Forms – For plugin and theme developers, this topic (post 1) demonstrates how to use the toolkit to build richer form experiences.
How Do I Pass Data to an Artifact? – In post 2, sam discussed passing dynamic data (and even query strings) to sandboxed AI artifacts securely; note his thoughts on potential security implications.
Bootstrap && Destroy && Start – Process experts discussed a rebuild strategy that shuts down containers, bootstraps new ones, and then starts them in order. See their detailed outline in post 2.
In Dark/Light Mode Toggle Now Available in Core, team member Osama explained the new toggle feature along with design trade‐offs (including the intentional black text on dark mode primary buttons).
In How Do I Pass Data to an Artifact?, sam discussed security considerations and the idea of echoing the URL’s query string into the artifact—ensuring safe tool chaining.
In Announcing: AI Web Artifacts, sam detailed major system refactors that promise more adjustable AI “knobs” for future automations.