What do I need before signing up?

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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

Hey @gina_riley

Ich unterstütze @tophees Vorschlag – der beste Weg, um Ordnung zu schaffen, ist, eine Testversion zu aktivieren und ein bisschen herumzuprobieren.

Konkrete Antworten auf deine Fragen:

  1. Nein. Wenn du bei Null startest, gibt es nichts zu migrieren. Du beginnst mit einer frischen Discourse-Instanz und baust deine Community von Grund auf auf. Fragen und Unterstützung dazu findest du in unserer Kategorie Community Building.

  2. Nein. Sobald du deine Testversion eingerichtet hast, kannst du deine Kategorien selbst organisieren. Es ist immer besser, klein anzufangen und zu wachsen, wenn es nötig ist. Halte die Anzahl der Kategorien (Support/Allgemein/eins bis zwei themenspezifische Kategorien) minimal und erweitere sie, je nachdem, welche Anforderungen sich ergeben.

  3. Das sind Themes (Designs). Du kannst dein Theme hier ändern – schau in das Hamburger-Menü.

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Allerdings gibt es viele Möglichkeiten, Discourse anzupassen. Ich empfehle, deine Testversion zum Laufen zu bringen, und dann können wir dir bei den nächsten Schritten helfen.

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.