What do I need before signing up?

Support Self-hosting
1

A few questions, thank you in advance.

(1) Before I sign up for discourse hosting, do I need to have a forum already for migration?

(2) I have a great idea of the setup of a discourse so that being said, I am guessing that I need to have the categories already written and ready to go for the hosting party to download or implement?

(3) I noticed some of the discourse forums have really cool background pictures like “Gems of War” & some have a black background, that I really like. If I want to add picture background, what dimension should I get it in?

Note: I am starting from scratch.

Thanks again, Gina

2

You could start with a 14 day free trial:

No, you don’t need that. You enter them once you log in as an admin.

BTW: it is better to start off with just a few categories anyway and add nee ones based on how the community evolves.

3

مرحبًا @gina_riley

أتفق مع اقتراح @tophee – أفضل طريقة لتنظيم الأمور هي الاشتراك في فترة تجريبية وتجربة المنصة.

إجابات محددة لأسئلتك:

  1. لا. إذا كنت تبدأ من الصفر، فلن يكون هناك شيء للانتقال إليه. ستبدأ بنسخة جديدة من Discourse وتبني مجتمعك من الأساس. يمكنك طرح الأسئلة والحصول على الدعم في فئة Community Building هنا.

  2. لا. بمجرد إعداد فترة التجربة، يمكنك تنظيم الفئات بنفسك. من الأفضل دائمًا البدء بشكل صغير والنمو حسب الحاجة. اجعل الحد الأدنى من الفئات (الدعم/عام/فئة أو فئتين متعلقة بالموضوع) وأضف إليها حسب ما تراه مناسبًا بناءً على المتطلبات.

  3. هذه هي السمات. يمكنك تغيير السمة هنا – تحقق من القائمة الجانبية (زر القائمة)

image
image365×147 11.3 KB

مع ذلك، هناك العديد من الطرق لتخصيص Discourse. أقترح أن تقوم بإعداد فترة التجربة وتشغيلها، ثم يمكننا مساعدتك في الخطوات التالية.

4

I believe that hamburger theme thing is custom here on meta as a demo, so it is better to change user theme in your user preferences in the usual place which will work in all cases.

5

Ah yes – what he said. ^^

Thanks for the catch.

6

The “Gems of War” wallpaper is excellent. I’m assuming the “Gems of War” guys customized their code and did not use discourse administration settings.

I have launched discourse for the community of Montgomery, Alabama and the Chamber of Commerce will announce launch. The unused Medium platform has the image for the discourse platform: Montgomery Medium platform

Any suggestions before I begin to inspect “Gems of War” css?

7

Hey Josh,
This is a good starting point if you want to create complicated themes: Developing Discourse Themes & Theme Components

8

Very informative @HAWK.
Thanks for the post.

I’ll probably hire a freelancer due to time constraints. Does the Discourse team have in house experts who provide custom theme services?
I want the city’s discourse forum to really attract the end user’s attention with local images.

9

Hey Josh, not inhouse, no. We can recommend @joebuhlig from Procourse though. He is excellent.