Discourse: Self-Hosted Community Forum

Discourse is a modern, open-source discussion platform built for the next decade of the internet. With over 46,000 GitHub stars, it powers communities for major organizations including Mozilla, Netlify, and Docker. Discourse replaces traditional forum software with a real-time, mobile-friendly interface that encourages healthy discussion through built-in trust levels, moderation tools, and engagement features.

Self-hosting Discourse means your community's conversations, member data, and content live on your own infrastructure — fully under your control.

Key Features

• Real-time discussion threads with infinite scroll, live updates, and inline replies
• Trust level system that automatically promotes engaged members and reduces moderation burden
• Rich text editor with Markdown support, drag-and-drop image uploads, and link previews
• Category and tag organization with granular access permissions per group
• Built-in moderation tools including flagging, review queues, slow mode, and temporary bans
• SSO integration and OAuth support for GitHub, Google, Discord, and custom providers
• Plugin ecosystem with chat, polls, voting, events, and custom theme components
• Full-text search with instant results across all posts, topics, and user profiles

Why Self-Host Discourse?

Community data ownership. Your community's posts, profiles, and private messages are valuable data. Self-hosting ensures this data stays on your server, protected by your security policies. No third-party platform can mine your community's conversations or sell access to advertisers.

Custom branding and experience. Self-hosted Discourse lets you create a fully branded community experience with custom themes, CSS, header/footer modifications, and plugin-driven features. This goes far beyond what hosted forum services allow.

No platform risk. Communities built on hosted platforms are vulnerable to policy changes, price increases, or shutdowns. Self-hosting means your community's home is permanent and independent. Your URL, your data, your rules.

Integration freedom. Self-hosted Discourse connects to your existing infrastructure — SSO with your authentication system, webhooks to your services, API access for custom integrations, and plugins for specific community needs.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	2 vCPUs	4+ vCPUs
RAM	2 GB	4 GB
Storage	20 GB SSD	40 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Discourse is a Rails application with PostgreSQL and Redis. It's more resource-intensive than lightweight forums. For communities with hundreds of active users and high posting volume, 4 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM keeps the experience responsive.

Getting Started

The fastest way to deploy Discourse on your VPS is with Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our step-by-step deployment guide walks you through the full setup, including persistent storage, environment configuration, and SSL.

Deploy Discourse with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• Flarum — Lightweight, modern forum software with a focus on speed and simplicity
• NodeBB — Real-time forum platform built on Node.js with social media-style features
• Lemmy — Federated link aggregator and discussion platform in the Fediverse
• Answer — Open-source Q&A platform for community knowledge sharing

FAQ

How much does self-hosting Discourse cost? Discourse itself is free and open-source. Your cost is just the VPS — typically $20-40/month for a server that handles a moderately active community. This compares favorably to Discourse's hosted plans which start at $50/month for basic features.

Can Discourse replace Slack or Discord for my community? Discourse excels at persistent, searchable discussions organized by topic. It includes a chat plugin for real-time messaging. For communities that value long-form discussion and searchable knowledge, Discourse is superior. For fast-paced chat, pair it with a dedicated chat platform.

Does Discourse support single sign-on? Yes. Discourse has built-in SSO support as both a provider and consumer. It integrates with OAuth providers (Google, GitHub, Discord), SAML, and custom SSO implementations. This lets members sign in with their existing accounts from your other services.

How do I back up my Discourse instance? Discourse has a built-in backup system accessible from the admin panel. It creates compressed archives of your database and uploaded files that can be stored locally or pushed to S3-compatible storage. Scheduled automatic backups are configurable.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.