1. If you're **brand new to Ruby and Rails**, please see [**Discourse as Your First Rails App**](http://blog.discourse.org/2013/04/discourse-as-your-first-rails-app/) or our [**Discourse Vagrant Developer Guide**](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/VAGRANT.md), which includes instructions to get up and running in a development environment using a virtual machine. This beginner's guide is also adequate for developers ready to sink their teeth quickly; it's the easiest way to hack on Discourse!
2. Once you have Discourse up and running, be sure to load [the appropriate seed data](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/pg_dumps) on your forum, either the **developer** seed data, which is the same data you'll see on [try.discourse.org](http://try.discourse.org), or the **production** seed data which includes the [Discourse Admin Quick Start Guide](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/wiki/The-Discourse-Admin-Quick-Start-Guide) and meta guidance.
3. If you're familiar with how Rails works and are comfortable setting up your own environment, use our [**Discourse Advanced Developer Guide**](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPER-ADVANCED.md).
Before you get started, ensure you have the following minimum versions: [Ruby 1.9.3+](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/), [PostgreSQL 9.1+](http://www.postgresql.org/download/), [Redis 2.6+](http://redis.io/download). And if you're having trouble, please see our [**TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE**](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md) first!
We think of Discourse as a **Civilized Discourse Construction Kit**, an open-source discussion platform that acts as a free, flexible, fundamental building block for online communities of any size, tiny to huge.
- A **flattened, endlessly scrolling discussion**, which avoids the awkwardness of traditionally threaded and paginated discussion, while still allowing replies to be expanded in place for context.
- A **user trust system** that grants users rights to assist in moderating the forum as they participate in good faith over time. The goal is for the forum to be nearly self-moderating in the absence of any formal moderators, although excellent moderators do accelerate the process greatly.
Our goal is to **foster an active community of contributors**, all of whom commit to free, simple, pleasant to use online discussion software that can thrive in an Internet age dominated by micro-blogging and diminishing attention spans. Internet discussion belongs to everyone, not just huge corporate websites.
2. Read and sign the [**Electronic Discourse Forums Contribution License Agreement**](http://discourse.org/cla), to confirm you've read and acknowledged the legal aspects of your contributions, and
3. Dig into [**CONTRIBUTING.MD**](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md), which houses all of the necessary info to:
The original Discourse code contributors can be found in [**AUTHORS.MD**](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/AUTHORS.md). For a complete list of the many individuals that contributed to the design and implementation of Discourse, please refer to [the official Discourse website](http://www.discourse.org).
