Over the years I’ve helped friends hosting their own forum. I’ve made them rent a Hetzner server, set up automated backups on Discourse, and I sync them to my Google Drive with rclone and a cron task. Each admin of each forum has access to their own backups on my Drive. It’s the simplest and safest…

I pull backups using rsync over ssh, with a restricted account, from a cronjob. Well, I don’t, but one of my mods does. I take and download a backup when I do an update. So, in the one case we could lose a few days of forum activity, and in the other case we could lose a month or more. I should …

S3 for backups, I’d recommend. Daily backups of the forum if you want to be safe. Backups of the VPS, if you want to be extra-safe. There’s also: [image] Best Practices for Backups Sysadmins If you are self-hosted, you should keep off-site backups in case the…

Well, I’m backupping the database every hour :man_shrugging: It is same principle than with e-commerce — one must consider what is the biggest timeframe what can and/or wants to restore.

Резервное копирование на S3 и на внешний диск при помощи restic

[image] NateDhaliwal: S3 for backups, I’d recommend. Agreed. If you’ve got the YML file(s) with the S3 configuration and backups on S3, then all you need to restore the forum on a new server is the YML file(s). This has the added benefit of not filling your disk with backups. CAVEAT: You hav…

[image] pfaffman: I have had someone somehow lose control of their AWS account and lost all of their images. So just remembering to pay the bill is a cost not to be underestimated. Exactly this - don’t have all copies of your data with one provider.

I like to have three encrypted copies, one in host, other cloud (S3 compatible) and the final in optical HD or USB drive. Planning to backup in decentralized storage, I am currently exploring the reliability of the available options as well.

我目前每天执行一次备份并上传数据库通过discourse内置的备份功能来备份，上传的原图通过restic每天执行增量备份都上传到网盘，但是目前的缺点是只上传了一种网盘，最好以后上传到多个网盘

use offsite backups and object storage. i use cloudflare R2 (S3 compatible) and have restored to different servers a number of times. easy to manage and restore. also, use a dual container build.

A useful tactic for these kinds of questions is to consider the threat model. We’ve already seen some of these fire destroys the building that contains your server you lose control of the account with your provider the person with control over your domain is permanently unavailable you lose acces…

What are the most basic but reliable ways to ensure a Discourse forum can always be recovered?

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NateDhaliwal (Nate Dhaliwal) October 3, 2026, 1:30pm 3

S3 for backups, I’d recommend. Daily backups of the forum if you want to be safe. Backups of the VPS, if you want to be extra-safe.

There’s also:

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Best Practices for Backups Sysadmins backups , explanation	0	3874	April 20, 2020
Backing up your forum Support	5	1016	October 14, 2022
Should I backup before rebuilding? Support	1	811	October 30, 2021
Discourse forum deleted without backup Support	4	435	January 13, 2024

What are the most basic but reliable ways to ensure a Discourse forum can always be recovered?

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