New forum migrated to our servers

Organisation Forum
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Previously (last week) I started a trial of these Discourse forums. That trial was hosted by Discourse. It would have been possible for us have Discourse host the whole forum for us. However this get’s a bit expensive since we have quite a high traffic level and we prefer to maintain full control over the site.

Luckily, Discourse is full open source and can be installed on any server for free… Amazing.

Following the Discourse Docker Install guide to install Discourse to a docker container on one of our dedicated servers, if you’re interested, specs are:

Operating System: Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS
Processor: Quad Core: Intel® Xeon® E3-1230 v2 (8M Cache, 3.30 GHz)
Memory: 32GB DDR3
Hard Drive: 2 x 240GB Solid State Drive MLC
Raid: H200 Raid Controller - Raid 1

This machine also serves openenergymonitor.org and the wiki.

The Discourse docker setup was quite easy to install following their guide. However, the only complication was setting up Nginx server as a reverse proxy to allow Discourse to work along side our other virtual hosts. We previously only had Apache installed serving our Drupal site, Discourse does not work well with Apache. Therefore, I had to setup Nginx as the front end server then set up reverse virtual host proxies to forward all traffic for the old site onto Apache and then connect to Discourse Docker via a http socket.

I have not yet setup HTTPS on the new forum… next item on the list, as is setting up fully nightly backups to be stored on a server in a different location to ensure all data is as safe as possible.

I’ve migrated all content and users from the Discourse trail (which was very easy via the Discourse admin web UI) .

Please report any issues.

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Hi Glyn.
The registration link which is automatically sent to confirm your email address, is a https link, ie
https://community.openenergymonitor.org/users/activate-account/8a8403e25e4a9c8e566074a6c7f05644
When you click to activate your account, it is browser blocked because it’s a SSL URL yet no certificates are currently in place.
I realise https is on your to-do list, but in the meantime users can just replace https with http to activate their accounts. ie
http://community.openenergymonitor.org/users/activate-account/8a8403e25e4a9c8e566074a6c7f05644

Paul

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Good point, I’ll change this to http so new users can join in the meantime. Did you just create an new account? Or was your account from the trail last week migrated over?

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It’s a new account just set up this morning. I didn’t have much free time last week!
It all ran smoothly, no problems at all apart from the https link. Seems like a nice place for OEM to live!

Paul

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Thanks for the positive response. It will no doubt be a little bit of hassle to move, but after using the new forum for a few days it feels like taking a step back in time when I go back to posting on the Drupal forum! It’s hope it’s a productive, friendly and safe place for us to be into the future :smiley:

I have made you moderator to join the other @moderators (this will notify them :wink:) You should be able to now see the moderator sections.

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well, well that was quick and not too hard it seems.
Nice to be here. Let’s hope most will do the jump quick so we don’t have 2 forums to visit. :wink:

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Just a quick message to say hi on the new forums :slight_smile:
Looks fresh, still need to find my way.

1 Like
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Welcome to the new forums yes we’re still finding our feet but it’s taking shape will invite everyone over soon