Discourse Operations

Discourse is an open source forum, available at [http://discourse.org].

Running

Stop the Discourse app:

/var/discourse/launcher stop app

Start the Discourse app:

/var/discourse/launcher start app

Monitoring

Interesting logs in:

/var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/rails/production.log

Installing

Install Docker

Create a new small AWS instance. 2GB memory is plenty, but needs 16GB of disk.

Create an elastic IP. Associate it with the instance.

Create a DNS record to the elastic IP.

sudo yum install -y docker
sudo service docker start

Add the ec2-user user to the docker group.

sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user

Log out and in again to get the new group.

Test the ability to run docker without root.

docker info

Install Discourse

sudo mkdir /var/discourse
sudo yum install -y git
sudo git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker.git /var/discourse

Configure Discourse

sudo -i
cd /var/discourse
cp samples/standalone.yml containers/app.yml

Configure /var/discourse/containers/app.yml as required.

./discourse-setup

SSL keys go in /var/discourse/shared/standalone/ssl.

Chaport integration

This is a chat system that integrates via Google Tag Manager.

GTM

• Log in to tagmanager.google.com.
• Create an Account (if it doesn't exist).
• Create a Container (if it doesn't exist).
• Get the container key (eg GTM-XXXXXXX).

Discourse

• Log in to the discourse instance as an Admin user.
• Search Settings for "gtm container id".
• Enter the container key.
• Search Settings for "content security policy script src".
• Add four entries:
  • https://tagmanager.google.com/
  • https://www.googletagmanager.com/
  • 'unsafe-inline'
  • https://app.chaport.com/

Chaport

• Log in to the Chaport site as an Admin user.
• Go to Settings | Installation Code.
• Copy the Installation Code.

GTM

• Return to Google Tag Manager.
• Go to Workspace | Overview.
• Click "Add a new tag".
• Set tag name to "Chaport live chat".
• Click on Tag Configuration and select Custom HTML.
• Paste the Installation Code.
• Click on Triggering.
• Select "All Pages".
• Click Save.
• Click Publish (choose a version name like v1).

Upgrading

Prepare for upgrade

Stop the discourse app.

/var/discourse/launcher stop app

Take an image of the discourse app EC2 instance. Take a snapshot of the discourse DB RDS instance.

Initiate upgrade

sudo -i
cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher rebuild app

Start the discourse app.

/var/discourse/launcher start app