What drove the conversations this week (high-level highlights): a new ESR release and follow-on upgrade questions (read more), more iteration on nested replies (including a new “Hot” sorting mode) (read more), and a cluster of UX/admin dashboard discussions about “where did the version info go?” (read more).
Interesting Topics
#enterprise
How close should customers be to your teams?HAWK kicked off a thoughtful thread on setting healthy boundaries between customers and product teams—covering “hidden costs” of engagement and how to build trust without creating an always-on expectation (read more).
#announcements
July 2026 monthly release + ESR shift: The 2026.7 release landed and became the new ESR, prompting practical guidance on pinning to a specific branch (e.g. release/2026.1) to avoid surprise jumps (read more).
Intermediate security releases (July 31):david posted the “intermediate releases” roundup and clarified that some “unexpected jumps” were actually due to the new ESR being released earlier in the week (read more).
Composer controls cleanup: The composer preview toggle moved to sit alongside the other window controls (fullscreen/minimize), and the minimized draft bar was simplified for clarity (read more).
Nested replies: “Hot” sorting: A new sort option designed to surface currently-engaging subthreads in nested replies—bridging the gap between “Top” and “New” (read more).
Pending user approval reminders: new default: A new upcoming change drops the default delay from 8 hours to 30 minutes on sites with approval enabled, improving staff responsiveness for queued users (read more).
Improving AI report accuracy via validation:sam introduced a more robust pipeline for AI periodic reports by adding workflow-based validation steps—aimed at improving summary quality without changing LLMs (read more).
“Agent skills” for Discourse AI: A proposal to store skill definitions in topics (one topic per skill), enabling more maintainable and permissioned agent behavior through progressive disclosure (read more).
Workflows + Gemini schema pain: A thread on Gemini choking on schema constructs (notably additionalProperties), with sam noting a spike toward the Interactions API for a more stable bridge (read more).
Moderating “AI-ish” content (without constant conflict): A practical report on using an AI classifier to flag overly formal / thesis-like AI-generated topics (especially from new users), including real-world cost estimates and moderation workflow details (read more).
Office Hours replay: embedded Discourse in full app mode: The team shared a replay about bringing Discourse conversations directly into external websites via full-page embedded experiences (read more).
Survey: needs of community administrators: A bachelor’s thesis survey asked admins/mods what analytics actually matter (newcomers, departures, workload, returning users, etc.) (read more).
#self-hosting
Cheaper alternatives to Hetzner? A wide-ranging thread on pricing changes, availability constraints, and real-world sizing advice (plus a script idea to alert when specific Hetzner instances become available) (read more).
Maintenance page workaround (Cloudflare Workers vs dual-container): Discussion weighed “nice touch” maintenance UX against complexity; dual-container rebuild strategy was repeatedly recommended to shrink downtime windows (read more).
“Updated to ESR but 578 new changes available” bug:david explained a DiscourseHub version-check issue (counting commits between refs) and posted the fix + a manual job trigger for impatient admins (read more).
Where did the version information go (new dashboard concerns): Admins debated the redesigned dashboard focus (community manager vs sysadmin needs), with discussion on roles/hats and potential future customization (read more).
Dark theme readability: reduce pure-white text: A design request to avoid harsh high-contrast white-on-black typography—especially relevant to the newer palettes in Horizon-style themes (read more).
Staff-only mode should not show login/signup CTAs: A UX improvement to avoid frustrating anonymous users with actions they can’t complete—fixed via a core PR (read more).
“Start Updating” button doesn’t look clickable: A small-but-painful affordance issue in the admin update UI, with a note that it changes under certain upcoming theme changes (read more).
Turkish translation outputs archaic/Ottoman language: The “Translate to Turkish” feature was over-transforming; the prompt was tightened to “stay in its lane” and produce faithful translations (read more).
Chat search results can’t scroll on mobile: Global chat search results were unscrollable via touch; fix shipped quickly in core (read more).
Homepage shows older topics (bfcache headers): A long-running “latest isn’t latest” issue was traced to bfcache-compatible headers and addressed via a PR (read more).
Reply-by-email from Outlook truncates after numbered lists: A reproducible formatting bug (with fixture email) was fixed via PR (read more).
development (and closely related implementation threads)
Trust Level 3 transparency: progress UI + core logic clarification: A plugin to expose TL3 progress to TL2 users sparked a broader conversation about what to reveal vs what can be gamed (read more), while a separate deep dive clarified how the % posts read requirement and the cap work in core (read more).
Logo behavior: small logo breakpoint override: A “why does the primary logo stay too long?” question ended up traced to a theme component overriding behavior; a new setting was added to restore default behavior (read more).
Correct CSS for light/dark: use light-dark() A concise styling tip: the native CSS light-dark() function can be simpler than container queries when you truly need explicit dual colors (read more).
#plugin / #theme-component
Resenha voice rooms: rapid UX iteration + new features: Multiple improvements landed (private lock icon, participant list discoverability, deep links to rooms), plus highlights like coturn auth, recording, flags, and tile right-click menus (read more).
Theme component: Mobile Composer Preview restored: The preview toggle was brought back for mobile (and debugging uncovered some Theme Creator preview-link flakiness, with better testing workflow tips) (read more).
Plugin: Event Duplicator for calendar topics: A new plugin to duplicate event topics into a new time period gained “shift (months)” support quickly (useful for monthly/quarterly event patterns) (read more).
Pushed forward Discourse AI reporting quality by adding workflow-driven validation steps to the AI report pipeline (read more).
Proposed a structured approach to “agent skills” stored as topics—aimed at reducing unwieldy system prompts and making agent capabilities easier to maintain collaboratively (read more).
Responded to Workflows + Gemini provider limitations and noted an upcoming push toward Interactions API for better stability (read more).
Shipped (or pointed to) fixes around media review behavior and edge cases in upload review logic (read more).
Clarified ESR upgrade mechanics (pinning to release/2026.1 vs tracking esr) in the monthly release thread (read more).
Posted the intermediate security releases list and explained why some “stable” installs jumped due to ESR timing rather than the intermediate release itself (read more).
Diagnosed and resolved the “578 new changes available” display issue as a DiscourseHub version-check API bug (read more).
Traced an avatar/image optimization failure back to an archived plugin and recommended removing it to restore normal uploads (read more).
Helped narrow down remaining iOS upload problems (beyond the older-iOS fix) by requesting better UA/log evidence (read more).
Fixed an AI translation prompt that was over-stylizing output, causing archaic Turkish; the revised prompt keeps translations faithful to tone and meaning (read more).
Delivered multiple Resenha improvements (UX fixes for private rooms and better participant management discoverability), plus deep-linking to rooms (read more).
Investigated iOS upload issues, suspecting instance-specific settings when “sandbox works but my site doesn’t” (read more).
Reduced noise from AI “structured output JSON warning” logs by moving that message to INFO level (read more).
Shipped a fix for mobile chat global-search scrolling and linked the core PR for inclusion on next update (read more).
Identified theme-component interference in header logo swapping behavior and added a new setting to restore default behavior in the full-width component (read more).
Advised on safer customization patterns (CSS variables over brittle selectors, stable plugin outlets over overrides) and what tends to break across updates (read more).
Provided a clean solution for light/dark styling using the CSS light-dark() function (read more).
Helped debug URL anchor stripping issues in the rich editor by suggesting HTML wrappers that survive composer transformations (read more).
Flagged a Meta theme translation issue (empty banner text) and looped in nat for investigation (read more).
Started a substantial discussion on staff participation frameworks and reducing fear-of-engagement across teams (especially when not everyone is an engineer/designer) (read more).
Weighed in on AI-content moderation norms and pushed back (lightly, but clearly) on the idea that humans should “downgrade writing style” to prove they’re not bots (read more).
Pointed users toward site text customization as the first stop for notification wording changes (read more).
Introduced “Hot sorting” for nested replies—designed to surface active subthreads without freezing early-liked replies at the top forever (read more).
Confirmed expected behavior for “new nested reply appears at top until refresh” and explained the UX rationale (visibility vs strict ordering) (read more).
Continued nested replies stabilization work with fixes for scroll jumping and post leakage across topics (read more).
Explained the TL3 “posts read” math and the cap in a way that finally made the logic click for folks reading core code (read more).
Added nuance to the “where did version info go?” debate by framing admin needs as multiple “hats” (sysadmin vs site admin vs community manager) and pointing toward more customizable /admin futures (read more).
Turned a “Me too” reporting question into a working Data Explorer query for admins to track shared-issue clicks by topic + date range (read more).
Engaged in early thinking around nested subcategory presentation in dropdowns, including tradeoffs and potential UI affordances (read more).
It’s been another busy week across Meta, with the community generating 613 new posts across 75 new topics in the last 7 days. A chorus of insightful feedback, robust testing, and thoughtful product discussion filled the forums—from a major composer redesign test to the bumpy path towards PostgreSQL 18.
A special shout-out to satonotdead, who was the most prolific poster this week with 37 posts, and Moin and merefield, who led the likes chart. Great to see the community buzzing with activity.
Interesting Topics
#Announcements
Help test the Composer redesign!chapoi unveiled a major experimental redesign of the composer, with goals to modernize the look & feel and improve mobile composing. The feedback floodgates opened: darkpixlz questioned why the title input was so huge, Don loved the modern look but suggested adding a visual grip/handle to the swipeable textarea, Canapin raised issues with the H1 title looking like part of the textarea and large titles getting partially hidden, and NateDhaliwal reported “colourless category icons” (accidental, fix on the way). satonotdead defended the bottom toolbar as more reachable on one-handed mobile use, and Don referenced an old bug where the context menu covers the editor button bar. sk-or-v1-contents even shared a CSS fix for the blue flash on expanding. read more
PostgreSQL 18 update for self-hosters — chrisr announced the upgrade of the Docker image to PostgreSQL 18, requiring roughly 2x database size in free disk space. The thread saw extensive Q&A: chrisr corrected the space warning to 2x, added a fix for core count detection using nproc --ignore=1, and Falco reported a smooth upgrade on a Pi 5. Lilly shared a detailed step-by-step guide for dual-container setups with Cloudflare CDN and R2 buckets read more, and Tobias_1 provided a German-language fix for the “group id 993 which does not exist” error by cleaning up leftover upgrade files and correcting permissions. read more
Gemini Interactions API support — sam announced that Discourse AI now supports the new Gemini Interactions API, recommending it for all Gemini inference. The new provider brings tool call streaming, native code execution, and a Google Maps tool—though the new API no longer allows disabling “thinking” on 2.5 flash models. read more
Updates on granular group-based permissions — In the ongoing thread about granular group-based permissions for anonymous and logged in users, satonotdead asked about CSS classes, and martin confirmed that official components now use resolve_group_membership and disallowed_groups, with several PRs merged for official components. Lilly contributed a PR to add anonymous_users and logged_in_users classes to the theme component. read more
#Community Building
For the next decade of the internet (2026 edition) — mcwumbly opened a thought-provoking discussion about what the next decade of the internet looks like, harking back to Discourse’s 2013 launch promise. awesomerobot gave a brilliant historical perspective, noting that we’ll still be “typing words into boxes” in 2036, just as we did in 2003. Ed_S raised concerns about monetisation of human connection and polarisation, while satonotdead envisioned both a multimedia-centric hub future and a hard-resistance, cypherpunk-decentralized option. read more
What’s the story behind your community? — Danielle invited members to share the origin stories of their communities, from caregivers of diabetic cats to interest hubs. HAWK shared how they see Meta as supporting both a shared project and a mission, with the open-source ethos at its heart. read more
Scalable engagement models — HAWK asked the community about one-to-many engagement models, citing office hours and webinars as infinitely scalable formats. mcwumbly shared the pattern of having feature announcements made by the people closest to the change, which hooks nicely into the product-building process and lets the community engage directly with builders. read more
Learning music (off-topic but interesting) — HAWK split out this delightful off-topic discussion about learning music from another thread, sharing his own journey from clarinet to drums. The thread evolved into sharing academic papers on Icaros, shamanic drumming and even a project to reconstruct imagined melodies from brain signals, contributed by philip_rhoades and satonotdead. read more
Public vs private discussion — HAWK posed the question of how much should be public vs private on a forum, outlining their preference for public engagement on Meta except when commercially sensitive. nickdb shared their approach of disallowing DMs entirely to keep oversight on technical guidance, preferring conversations that everyone can take part in. read more
#Feature
More direct access to topics with new replies — The unified new view continues to generate heated feedback. martin confirmed a user preference for splitting new/unread isn’t planned, but suggests a theme component could do it. Shauny reported user complaints about the 2-click workflow, seanblue said the old way “worked perfectly” for them, and awesomerobot proposed a prioritization preference. Moin pointed to the Custom Top Navigation Links component as a potential place to regain separate counts. read more
Always allow username-based password reset — southpaw highlighted that the hide_email_address_taken setting (enabled by default) makes the forgot-password form require email, and the feature request to always allow usernames gained traction. pfaffman admitted he had been “wrong-headed” and apologized for his initial dismissive response, noting that long-standing community members often don’t remember their signup email. awesomerobot noted this was an intentional change from a 2021 PR to harden sites against password-reset abuse. read more
Redesigned admin dashboard feedback — In the thread about the redesigned admin dashboard, mcwumbly linked to further discussion about where version information went, and Moin noted the removal of the Docker manager plugin. read more
Facebook-style Topic Modal theme component — Don shared a beautifully polished topic modal theme component, triggered when clicking a topic. awesomerobot flagged the large number of network requests which could cause rate limits on standard layouts, and Don acknowledged this and optimized with new settings like max_prefetches_per_minute. The component is still being battle-tested before open-sourcing, but Damian_Boon and Andrew_Rowe loved what they saw. read more
Contributor appreciation August (& Feb) 2026 — Moin wrote a heartfelt thank-you to all contributors over the past six months (and the previous ESR release), continuing the tradition from old release blog posts. HAWK added a much-appreciated . read more
#Self-hosting
Spanish self-hosting saga — Picho_Pelis ran into repeated failures setting up their Discourse instance on several VPSes. pfaffman diagnosed the core issue: the domain debatehosting.co didn’t exist (confirmed by supermathie with an actual host lookup), and merefield noted that “SSL blocked my domain” was actually Let’s Encrypt rate-limiting after the domain was cancelled. Lilly asked for better handling of the “solution” selection, and the user later confirmed a successful install on another domain. read more
Discourse-ID displays its own logo & name — Karthik_K1 reported that Discourse ID showed “Discourse” instead of their forum name. chapoi initially thought it wasn’t a bug, but after investigation, the workaround involved clearing the Discourse ID client credentials in the Rails console and toggling the feature. rishabh shared the admin button that triggers the same refresh and noted PRs are in place to automatically update ID metadata when the title/logo changes. read more
Is there any built-in chatbot? — Soumya_Ranjan_Mishra asked about built-in chatbot functionality beyond Discobot. RGJ pointed to the AI Bot and the Chatbot plugin, while awesomerobot explained that all the requested features (answering questions, auto-categorizing, auto-tagging) are available through Discourse AI, which ships with new installs—and powers ask.discourse.com. read more
Adding languages to the language selector — Karthik_K1 wanted to add Indian languages (Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, etc.) to the language selector. nat explained the selector is intentionally limited to Discourse-supported locales because it changes the whole UI (not just post content), and pointed to plugin creation and Crowdin translation as solutions. read more
Looking for storage details after update — m_terenui couldn’t find backup space and free disk info after the latest update. Moin linked the relevant discussions about the redesign, and awesomerobot provided the still-available admin/reports/storage_stats.json endpoint. read more
Anyone else seeing a drastic drop in Support forum activity? — HAWK shared an interesting AI-agent perspective on why search volatility is changing community dynamics, noting Reddit’s Q2 traffic numbers and the risk of dependence on external discovery. satonotdead recommended a self-hosted searxng instance for those who want real information. read more
Should ‘Me too’ be hidden on category description topics? — satonotdead asked about hiding ‘Me too’ on category description threads used as indexes for doc categories. awesomerobot agreed it should be hidden and made a change excluding those topics. read more
Improving the “update Discourse” page — mcwumbly opened a discussion on improving the update page, proposing an update history with links to changesets between updates. asa agreed and suggested a protocol of actual updates this site performed. read more
#Site feedback
Meta error banner - MERGE_BRANCH deployment failed — Users reported a deployment error banner on Meta. tgxworld confirmed the fix, and david later explained it was caused by a system that deploys git branches for testing, and that the error wasn’t supposed to be displayed to everyone. read more
The @team group had another massive week, engaging deeply across the platform on testing, feedback, and product development. Here’s what caught the team’s attention:
chapoi drove the Composer Redesign testing effort, responding thoughtfully to feedback, confirming fixes for the colorless category icons and the selector border issue, and clarifying that the composer changes are theme-independent. They also acknowledged the issue of preview being unavailable on mobile and planned to explore bringing back the preview button if the toggle proves insufficient. chapoi also responded to the Discourse-ID logo issue, initially misattributing it before helping with the workaround, and noted a fix for the mobile group UI.
chrisr led the PostgreSQL 18 upgrade announcement and was incredibly responsive throughout the thread, correcting the disk space warning, fixing core count detection, and addressing concerns about data checksums being disabled read more.
It’s been a busy and productive week on Meta, with 499 new posts across 56 fresh topics. The @team has been especially active, shipping fixes, opening AMAs, and pushing forward major features like AI subagents, a redesigned admin dashboard, and the new Workflows system. The community also rallied around moderation safety, self-hosting upgrades, and privacy-AI discussions.
samannounced Discourse AI subagents, a major upgrade that lets you delegate work from a main agent to specialized subagents—mixing LLMs, reducing context bloat, and increasing concurrency. The community quickly began imagining use cases like web researchers and fact-checkers, and Falco and sam shared plans to make skills more accessible. read more
The Composer Redesign testing thread continued with chapoi implementing a wave of fixes based on community feedback—ranging from tag button cutoffs to the rich text editor’s quirks. Testers like Canapin and per1234 provided detailed feedback, and chapoi is now refining title input and the markdown/preview split. read more
chrisr and the team walked self-hosters through the PostgreSQL 18 upgrade, fixing broken multisite upgrades and sharing detailed rollback steps. Users like agemo and Andrew_Rowe reported their own migration experiences, including disk-space gotchas, and Moin helpfully documented a manual dump-and-restore workaround. read more
The Workflows preview continues to spark excitement. lindsey and j.jaffeux recommended using Workflows even for simple automations due to flexibility and better visibility, and users are already exploring how it replaces the older Automations plugin. read more
samannounced delegated vision for AI, enabling text-only models like DeepSeek v4 Flash to use the full Discourse AI feature set by handing off image understanding to vision-capable models like Qwen or Gemma. read more
The unified topic list view is rolling out, but community members like Damian_Boon and soraiden are asking how to keep a simple “new topics by date” URL for social-style forums. jordan.vidrine confirmed the change is moving to permanent and will be merged into core. read more
sren-1 shared a JavaScript workaround in the Doc Categories landing-page request to redirect category listings to their index topic, while jordan.vidrine agreed that landing on the index page makes sense and could become a dedicated UI in the future. read more
rinion reported the AI bot auto-opening a private chat even with AI features disabled. gabriel investigated and pushed a fix, though rinion still saw it persist until a manual channel removal and a second deployment—an interesting case of state getting stuck between versions. read more
The public vs. private discussion turned into a thoughtful conversation about user-level control over AI crawlers and search engines. HAWK shared insights on granular controls for crawlers, attribution, and transparency obligations under the EU AI Act, while Jagster raised the real-world tension between indexing for SEO and preventing AI content scraping. read more
chau from Customer Success launched a Voice of the Customer (VoC) discussion, asking how communities feed into product and support loops. rosiesherry shared inspiring examples from the Ministry of Testing, including unscripted 1:1 video conversations with community members. read more
In Scalable engagement models, rosiesherry explored how logged conversations and community data can be repurposed across an organization, sparking ideas about who gets heard and how insights scale beyond a few loud voices. read more
#Self-hosting
wsmwktb asked whether opening a self-hosted Discourse to participating sites’ accounts via Discourse ID had significant downsides. Falco dismantled the old fear-based arguments (hallucinations), clarified how Discourse ID really works, and offered practical advice like enforcing 2FA for staff. read more
Ethsim2 shared a detailed setup for running Caddy in front of Discourse’s Nginx to enable HTTP/3 at the edge, including an app.yml hook for correct client IPs and log redaction tips. pfaffman linked to an existing PR for reference, and the conversation included a useful correction about QUIC 0-RTT being unnecessary. read more
The Custom Wizard Plugin saw a flurry of activity as Lebron and Eviepayne reported fields, tags, and group settings being cleared on save. angus responded with multiple PRs (#318, #319), fixing the category and tag issues, though some edge cases around theme selection and signup redirects remain. read more
Don released the Custom Splash HTML Builder, a plugin for fully custom splash screens with admin-defined HTML/CSS—originally motivated by mobile performance concerns with SVG animations. agemo praised it as a long-awaited solution for better branding during slow connections. read more
#Community Building
OS_Corsair opened [“How do I grow my community?” and received mixed responses. While Moin and NateDhaliwal offered thoughtful questions about audience, structure, and value proposition, the topic eventually veered off-track and was closed by moderators. It’s a good reminder that a clear, specific question yields much better advice. read more
Welcome to your weekly digest of everything happening on Meta! This week the forum buzzed with AI-themed debate, major new admin features, and plenty of helpful community troubleshooting. Read on for the key stats, the most interesting discussions, and a rundown of what the @team has been up to.
Key Stats
Over the last 7 days, the community produced 576 new posts across 65 new topics. A big thank you to everyone sharing knowledge, reporting bugs, and helping fellow admins!
Top users this week (ranked by likes received, with post counts):
lindsey announced that the admin dashboard can now identify likely crawler traffic, separating automated bots and scrapers that run real browser JavaScript from genuine anonymous visitors. ted asked whether likely crawlers still count toward the monthly pageview limit — @lindsey confirmed it’s undecided — while kris.kotlarek noted the detection also works for logged-in users, having found TL0 scanners on Meta itself. read more
rishabh published the Current Projects – August 2026 newsletter, recapping recent work on dashboard improvements, the Events plugin, AI Image Captions v2, and a new Kanban plugin. satonotdead asked whether Zoom livestreaming would support Livekit or Jitsi alternatives, and awesomerobot explained that Livestream and Resenha are on separate development paths — with YouTube, Twitch, Kick, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook already supported. read more
sam released a new admin-only feature for detailed AI logs at /admin/plugins/discourse-ai/ai-logs, complete with retention controls, streaming response decoding, and rich filtering. nickdb praised it as a great tool for tracking automatic translation, and floated the idea of an auto-refresh option. read more
zogstrip showcased a change where the empty tag picker now suggests tags from your 10 most recent topics instead of site-wide popular tags. sren-1 worried this creates a self-reinforcing loop that reduces tag diversity, while satonotdead suggested a middle-ground toggle — and zogstrip agreed it’s worth experimenting with. read more
Falco announced a complete refresh of chat notification sounds, with five new synthesized sound packs — Classic and clean, Soft marimba, Retro 8-bit, Playful bubble, and Ethereal glass — each with distinct tones for messages and mentions, inspired by experiments in Resenha. read more
#Community Building
Divinebaboon asked how moderators deal with users who employ AI to auto-reply to threads in order to gain trust levels. merefield highlighted even sneakier sock-puppet patterns, mbauman noted the AI “load-bearing seams” usually show through, and HAWK argued for a first-principles approach: if the content is valuable, does it matter how it was created?satonotdead shared a custom karma-quest system designed to make automation boring. read more
The long-running thread on the drastic drop in community activity for Support forums continued with passionate debate. nickdb observed that AI-assisted volume is hard for small communities, mbauman shared that new posters are the biggest drop-off in programming communities, and Mevo pushed back on form-versus-content. HAWK pondered when “the snake starts to eat itself” if everyone blocks crawlers from fresh human content. read more
HAWK launched Show us your Workflows, revealing a Weekly Update Reminder workflow that serves progressively worse CSS to teammates who delay their check-ins. chapoi admitted it was “the ugliest theme I’ve ever made,” zogstrip explained the LLM classifier and data explorer logic, and nickdb shared a simpler workflow that auto-corrects misplaced categories based on tags. read more
The philosophical thread asking Can money be the only moderator of a forum? continued, with awesomerobot explaining why subscription models beat microtransactions due to payment friction, Mevo citing YouTube’s ad-revenue approach, and satonotdead linking a 1999 essay on micropayments and mental transaction costs. read more
Ryan_Scott reported the calendar was down for all ~1,200 users after updating to 2026.8, then self-resolved it by re-enabling the discourse post event enabled site setting. awesomerobot confirmed the team identified and applied a migration fix to prevent it from happening to other sites. read more
sk-or-v1-contents reported flaky search behavior with stop words and smart quotes. awesomerobot explained that words like it, we, and don't are excluded from indexing because they appear too often, and that quoted phrases require exact matches — prompting satonotdead to wonder whether search itself needs some refactoring love. read more
Jagster couldn’t see AI-translated post content after switching their interface language to English. Moin explained that the Content languages preference controls this — remove Finnish from understood languages, or leave the field empty, and translations will appear as before. read more
Joshua8600 reported that auto-bumped topics no longer show unread indicators after upgrading from February to July 2026. Moin traced it to changes in how small action posts are tracked, noting this may be why bumps no longer mark topics as unread. read more
satonotdead asked how to move the New Topic button on Horizon to a floating bottom-right position. chapoi provided working CSS, diagnosed the stacking-context issue caused by a position: sticky parent, and suggested a z-index: 1 fix on the sidebar-wrapper. read more
jahan_gagan asked for a supported way to replace modifyClass("model:composer") when overriding save. awesomerobot suggested value transformers and event hooks, and david added a new composer-minimum-post-length value transformer in PR #42686, later updated to also fix the hard-coded “Post can’t be empty” validation. read more
The discussion on Maintenance page workaround continued, with Jagster and merefield strongly recommending the two-container setup to avoid downtime during rebuilds. mcdanlj offered a balanced caveat that it’s not for everyone, while satonotdead praised learning about the approach for larger servers. read more
Ed_S asked whether a pitchfork worker with 2.2M requests was using too much memory. david shared production cluster graphs showing memory grows after launch but settles below 1.4GB, explaining that copy-on-write forking from the mold process means per-process RSS doesn’t tell the whole story. read more
Don shipped several updates to the Topic Preview Modal: a new open_all_topic_links setting, nested view support, a desktop/mobile toggle, plus fixes for Horizon’s high-context topic card mode. Jagster and joo reported edge cases that Don quickly patched in follow-up commits. read more
satonotdead explored adding a New Topic button and dynamic reply behavior to the F NAV Mobile Navigation Tabs component. Don responded by adding a /new-topic destination option and clarified that positioning relies on the --f-nav-height variable. read more
#Plugin
j.jaffeux answered community questions in Discourse Workflows, sharing a data-explorer workflow node example for retrieving user info and demonstrating the bump topic operation. patrickemin asked about filtering new-user triggers by activation status, and Aurora confirmed success in German. read more
Falco detailed major Resenha updates: reworked WebRTC controls for noise suppression, auto gain control, and echo cancellation; three AI noise suppression models (RNNoise, DTLN, DeepFilter3); and direct 1:1 calls which are disabled by default and can be restricted by group. read more
#Translations
happyhappy asked about adding a Basque language interface to Discourse. Moin explained that new locales are added once roughly 50% of the software is translated on Crowdin, with Basque currently at 13%. Undeterred, happyhappy began rallying native speakers and discovered the 100,000+ strings awaiting translation. read more
It was another busy week on Meta, with 51 new topics and 453 new posts created between 2026-08-23 and 2026-08-30. Community members were in a generous mood, racking up thousands of likes as discussions ranged from brand-new admin tools to deep theme customisation and Workflows experiments.
Site traffic explorer for new admin dashboard — tgxworld unveiled a new admin-only Site Traffic Explorer as part of the redesigned admin dashboard, offering filters for dimensions such as URLs, referrers, countries, networks, browsers, and IP addresses. The explorer analyses up to 200,000 pageviews by default, configurable to 1,000,000 via the site_traffic_explorer_event_limit setting. In the thread, tgxworld confirmed there are no current plans for event tracking like Umami, and noted that badge-related URLs dominating Top URLs look like bot traffic with a 100% bounce rate. read more
New drag-and-drop support for managing custom sidebar content — lindsey announced two new drag-and-drop behaviours that make building custom sidebar sections much easier: you can now drag any link directly into an existing custom section (triggering the Edit modal) or drop it at the bottom of the sidebar to create a brand-new section. The built-in Categories and Tags sections are excluded from rearrangement. read more
Discourse MCP the next version — sam announced Discourse MCP v0.3, which ships with a whopping 131 tools compared to 25 in 0.2.9, introducing a new “toolsets” concept that lets you expose features ranging from workflow generation and administration to AI configuration, analytics, and theme creation. Falco pointed to the original announcement video for inspiring use cases. read more
Discourse Calendar is now Discourse Events! — lindsey announced the rebranding of Discourse Calendar to Discourse Events to better reflect the plugin’s expanding feature set, highlighting recent improvements including easy event categories, more flexible RSVPs for recurring events, integrated livestreaming, and support for Zoom webinars. read more
August 2026 monthly release — loic published the release notes for v2026.8.0, along with patch releases for v2026.7.2, v2026.6.3, and v2026.1.8. elmuerte reminded everyone that this is the final month of support for the 2026.1 old-ESR line. read more
Help Us Test the Composer Redesign — The composer redesign continued to draw passionate feedback. chapoi said toolbar customisation is a desired idea but not part of the current styling-focused redesign, while sren-1 cautioned that mobile-first changes shouldn’t come at the expense of desktop users’ muscle memory. nickdb countered that desktop-only communities are a shrinking minority, and j127 raised contrast concerns for the active input border. read more
#Community Building
I would like to thank the Discourse development team — ErespawN shared a heartfelt thank-you to the Discourse team, showcasing a Turkish community built with Discord-style user cards, custom themes, a marketplace, and cosmetics store plugins they developed with AI assistance. The multilingual thread drew praise from gilles and eisammy, with NateDhaliwal admiring how far Discourse customisation can go. read more
Show us your Workflows — AJ_Quick shared an impressive AI-powered re-engagement workflow that locates stale topics, generates AI summaries, evaluates whether they need follow-up, and posts bot replies to spark discussion. mcwumbly contributed several production-ready weekly report workflows — covering moderation, flags, and activity — with downloadable JSON files for others to import. read more
Can money be the only moderator of a forum? — rosiesherry defended a pay-to-post model where annual fees fund employees and community investment, saying it’s the only way she wants to run a community. satonotdead floated an experimental idea for a Monero-based tip and reward system integrated into Discourse, sharing several open-source references for inspiration. read more
#Theme component / #Theme
Topic Preview Modal — Don iterated rapidly on this popular theme component, adding configurable mobile dismiss gestures (None/Grip/Gesture), native Back-handling that closes the modal without losing your place in the topic list, optional haptic feedback on Android, and a dedicated timeline modal. Extensive testing feedback came from Damian_Boon, Jagster, and satonotdead across iOS and Android. read more
FKB Pro - Social theme — Don announced FKB Pro v2, a substantial under-the-hood update with a more flexible desktop topic list layout, better responsive behaviour for narrow screens and overflowing content, and performance optimisations for off-screen topic cards. gilles reported a mobile category-heading layout bug, which Don addressed with a CSS grid-based fix. read more
Guest Gate Theme Component — Don shipped Guest Gate v2.0, a major update that moves beyond simple page-view limits to support multiple trigger types — page views, time, scroll depth, lightbox opening, or any combination — along with configurable delays, optional analytics, and a completely rebuilt trigger system. read more
#Plugin
Discourse Workflows — A huge week for Workflows. Ethsim2 opened PRs adding Event actions (Close/Open event) and a generic Event → Set attendance operation, while j.jaffeux confirmed a native Event node is arriving next week and fixed pm_tags_allowed_for_groups errors for AI agent tagging. putty and AJ_Quick shared their own workflow experiments and got helpful troubleshooting. read more
Animated Avatar — Alteras pushed two urgent fixes for the animated avatars plugin affecting Discourse v2026.8+, resolving the key not found: "resize_animated" error and a subsequent malformed gifsicle --crop argument bug. akanora and satonotdead confirmed the fixes work, though animated WebP support remains a future possibility. read more
ProxyTracer: VPN & Proxy Blocker — ProxyTracer engaged with a lively community discussion about Cloudflare template compatibility, floated an hCaptcha middle-ground option (instead of outright blocking) for privacy-conscious VPN/Tor users, and responded to questions about mobile network IP/ASN handling and login attempt visibility. read more
See TL3 Progress — merefield suggested expanding the plugin beyond TL3 into a whole “Trust Level Progress Meter,” and NateDhaliwal agreed a rework is possible. EricGT noted the timing is excellent as TL3 work nears completion, and saw potential for automating guidance for TL0 users stuck on entry requirements. read more
Starred chats disappear if user is in more than 100 chats — ARK-Helena filed a meticulous bug report showing that starred chat channels vanish when a user follows more than 100 public channels, tracing the cause to a hard MAX_PUBLIC_CHANNEL_RESULTS = 100 limit in the backend. zogstrip responded with a blazing-fast fix that fetches starred channels independently instead of filtering the truncated list. read more
Tri titre alphabétique dans catégorie — gilles requested a per-category default alphabetical sort for topic titles, explaining his board game reference categories need it. RGJ noted similar needs for courses and lesson-numbered topics, and satonotdead confirmed the existing filter doesn’t preserve the tile layout users want. read more
#Site feedback
When was this new Search page added? — NateDhaliwal spotted a redesigned Search page here on Meta and wondered if it was a Meta-only experiment. Falco revealed it’s v2 of Conversational AI Search coming to Discourse AI, with a full announcement expected next week. read more
Search icon covers search input — Moin reported the search icon overlapping the input text in the header banner. awesomerobot explained Meta is running a testing branch and the overlap appears for users (and logged-out visitors) with the “Enable AI search discoveries” preference unchecked — with a fix promised soon. read more
tgxworld launched the new Site Traffic Explorer, answering questions about events tracking, badge URL bot traffic, and rolling the feature out to hosted sites.
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