What do I need before signing up?

支持 安装
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

你好 @gina_riley

我支持 @tophee 的建议——要把事情理顺，最好的办法就是注册一个试用账号，然后进去随便逛逛、试试。

针对你的具体问题，回答如下：

  1. 不需要。如果你是从零开始，那就没有什么需要迁移的。你将从一个全新的 Discourse 实例开始，从头搭建你的社区。你可以在我们的 Community Building（社区建设）板块提问并获得相关支持。

  2. 不需要。一旦你搭建好试用环境，就可以自行安排分类结构。建议从小处着手，根据需求逐步扩展。先设置最基础的分类（如支持/综合/一两个主题相关分类），然后根据实际需求再逐步添加。

  3. 那些是主题（Themes）。你可以在此处更改主题——查看一下那个汉堡菜单（三条横线图标）。

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话虽如此，Discourse 有很多自定义方式。我建议你先搭建好试用环境并运行起来，之后我们可以帮你规划下一步该怎么做。

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.