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

Ei, @gina_riley

Vou apoiar a sugestão do @tophee – a melhor maneira de organizar as coisas é se inscrever para uma versão de teste e brincar um pouco.

Respostas específicas para as suas perguntas:

  1. Não. Se você está começando do zero, não haverá nada para migrar. Você começará com uma nova instância do Discourse e construirá sua comunidade do zero. Você pode fazer perguntas e obter suporte para isso aqui na nossa categoria Community Building.

  2. Não. Depois de configurar sua versão de teste, você pode organizar suas categorias como quiser. É sempre melhor começar pequeno e crescer conforme necessário. Tenha o mínimo necessário de categorias (suporte/geral/uma ou duas categorias relacionadas ao assunto) e adicione mais conforme você identificar as necessidades.

  3. Esses são temas. Você pode alterar seu tema aqui – confira o menu de hambúrguer

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Dito isso, há muitas maneiras de personalizar o Discourse. Eu sugeriria configurar sua versão de teste e, em seguida, podemos ajudá-lo com os próximos passos.

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.