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I am far from a Rails programmer, but I code. I tried setting up Discourse and it was more difficult than I expected. I've read similar feedback from others who

I am far from a Rails programmer, but I code. I tried setting up Discourse and it was more difficult than I expected. I've read similar feedback from others who have tried. I think this is sort-of good news. It's to be expected that others would get in to the game of hosting Discourse and I'm glad that people who want to live on the bleeding edge finally have access to modern online forum software. But it also makes me a bit sad because there is a business model behind Discourse that involves hosting and I hope these kinds of actions don't negatively hurt the Discourse project. For my thoughts on Discourse in general, I recently posted to meta.discourse.org: http://meta.discourse.org/t/an-old-jive-employee-so-happy-to-discover-discourse/5166 http://meta.discourse.org/t/an-old-jive-employee-so-happy-to...

cmbaus 14y ago
I've put quite a bit of time into researching the Discourse install process: https://github.com/baus/install-discourse https://github.com/baus/install-discourse I'm not a Rubyist, so it took me a longer than I would expect it would take an experienced Ruby admin. With that said, installing and running a modern Rails app is not a trivial process. I'm curious how Bitnami has addressed this. Jeff Atwood and the team have put a lot of thought into the project. While it is in early stages, it has a lot of potential. Given their credentials, I think there is a good possibility that Discourse will eventually subsume most other open source forum projects.
- emilioolivares 14y ago
  Thanks cmbaus, I'll have to your steps out. Appreciate you taking the time to put this together.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  I think they use an installation image, which makes me wonder how the process of upgrading and migrating the database would work in such a case.
prezjordan 14y ago
I'm surprised at how bulky the app is. I feel like it should be relatively portable, and be able to run without too much memory (I have to bump my VPS to at least 1GB just to precompile the assets). Looking at the codebase, it strikes me as odd. Is there really that much going on?
ridruejo 14y ago
We don't think this would hurt Discourse or any of the projects that we package, but rather we are helping the project by simultaneously enlarging the number of users that can install Discourse (by making it easier) and reducing technical support (by preventing common installation issues). The reason why WordPress is so popular is that anybody can download and install it and is offered by nearly every shared hosting provider, VPS provider, etc. But when people want a hosted version, or professional services, etc. the majority will still go to wordpress.com Discourse is aiming to do the same and become synonymous with forum software by creating high-quality forum software and giving it away. Given the dismal state of forum software I, for one, hope they succeed and will try to help them in all I can.

cmbaus 14y ago

I've put quite a bit of time into researching the Discourse install process: https://github.com/baus/install-discourse https://github.com/baus/install-discourse I'm not a Rubyist, so it took me a longer than I would expect it would take an experienced Ruby admin. With that said, installing and running a modern Rails app is not a trivial process. I'm curious how Bitnami has addressed this. Jeff Atwood and the team have put a lot of thought into the project. While it is in early stages, it has a lot of potential. Given their credentials, I think there is a good possibility that Discourse will eventually subsume most other open source forum projects.

emilioolivares 14y ago
Thanks cmbaus, I'll have to your steps out. Appreciate you taking the time to put this together.
kmfrk 14y ago
I think they use an installation image, which makes me wonder how the process of upgrading and migrating the database would work in such a case.

prezjordan 14y ago

I'm surprised at how bulky the app is. I feel like it should be relatively portable, and be able to run without too much memory (I have to bump my VPS to at least 1GB just to precompile the assets). Looking at the codebase, it strikes me as odd. Is there really that much going on?

ridruejo 14y ago

We don't think this would hurt Discourse or any of the projects that we package, but rather we are helping the project by simultaneously enlarging the number of users that can install Discourse (by making it easier) and reducing technical support (by preventing common installation issues). The reason why WordPress is so popular is that anybody can download and install it and is offered by nearly every shared hosting provider, VPS provider, etc. But when people want a hosted version, or professional services, etc. the majority will still go to wordpress.com Discourse is aiming to do the same and become synonymous with forum software by creating high-quality forum software and giving it away. Given the dismal state of forum software I, for one, hope they succeed and will try to help them in all I can.