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

Ciao @gina_riley

Condivido il suggerimento di @tophee: il modo migliore per organizzarsi è registrarsi per una prova gratuita e fare qualche prova.

Risposte specifiche alle tue domande:

  1. No. Se parti da zero, non c’è nulla da migrare. Inizierai con un’istanza di Discourse nuova di zecca e costruirai la tua comunità da zero. Puoi fare domande e ricevere supporto per questo nella nostra categoria Community Building.

  2. No. Una volta configurata la tua prova, puoi organizzare le categorie come preferisci. È sempre meglio iniziare con poco e crescere secondo le necessità. Mantieni il minimo indispensabile di categorie (supporto/generale/uno o due categorie relative all’argomento) e aggiungine altre man mano che emergono le esigenze.

  3. Si tratta di temi. Puoi modificare il tema qui: controlla il menu hamburger

image
image365×147 11.3 KB

Detto questo, ci sono molti modi per personalizzare Discourse. Ti consiglio di attivare la tua prova e poi possiamo aiutarti con i prossimi passi.

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.