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

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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.

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@gina_riley さん、こんにちは

@tophee さんの提案に賛成です——物を整理する最善の方法は、トライアルに登録して実際に触ってみることです。

ご質問への具体的な回答：

  1. いいえ。ゼロから始める場合は、移行するものは何もありません。Discourse のインスタンスを新規作成し、コミュニティを一から構築することになります。そのための質問やサポートは、Community Building カテゴリで受けられます。

  2. いいえ。トライアルの設定が完了したら、カテゴリはご自身で整理できます。最初は小さく始め、必要に応じて拡大していくのが良いでしょう。最低限のカテゴリ（サポート/一般/1〜2つの関連するトピック別カテゴリ）のみを用意し、要件が見えてきたら追加してください。

  3. それらはテーマです。テーマはここで変更できます——ハンバーガーメニューを確認してください。

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なお、Discourse のカスタマイズ方法は他にもたくさんあります。まずはトライアル環境を構築していただき、その後、次のステップについてお手伝いさせていただきます。

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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.

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Ah yes – what he said. ^^

Thanks for the catch.

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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?

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

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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.

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