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The Discourse Docker Image makes it easy to set up Discourse on a cloud server. We will use Digital Ocean, although these steps will work on other similar services.

This guide assumes that you have no knowledge of Ruby/Rails or Linux shell. Feel free to skip steps you are comfortable with.

Create New Digital Ocean Droplet

Discourse requires a minimum of 1 GB RAM, however 2 GB RAM is strongly recommended. We'll use "discourse" as the Hostname.

Install Discourse on Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS x64. We always recommend using the current LTS distribution.

You will receive a mail from Digital Ocean with the root password to your Droplet. (However, if you use SSH keys, you may not need a password to log in.)

Access Your Droplet

Connect to your Droplet via SSH:

ssh root@192.168.1.1

(Alternately, use Putty on Windows)

Replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP address of your Droplet.

You will be asked for permission to connect, type yes, then the root password, which is in the email Digital Ocean sent you when the Droplet was set up. Enter it.

Install Git

apt-get install git

Generate SSH Key

We strongly recommend setting a SSH key because you may need to access the Rails console for debugging purposes. This cannot be done after bootstrapping the app.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"

(We want the default settings, so when asked to enter a file in which to save the key, just press enter. Via GitHub's SSH guide.)

Install Docker

Update to a newer kernel:

apt-get update
apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-raring linux-headers-generic-lts-raring

Reboot the server:

reboot

This will log you out from your SSH session, so reconnect:

ssh root@192.168.1.1

Finish installing Docker:

wget -qO- https://get.docker.io/ | sh

Install Discourse

Create a /var/docker folder where all the Docker related stuff will reside:

mkdir /var/docker

Clone the Official Discourse Docker Image into this /var/docker folder:

git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker.git /var/docker

Switch to your Docker folder:

cd /var/docker

Copy the samples/standalone.yml file into the containers folder as app.yml, so the path becomes containers/app.yml:

cp samples/standalone.yml containers/app.yml

Edit app.yml:

nano containers/app.yml

(We recommend Nano because it works like a typical GUI text editor, just use your arrow keys. Hit CtrlO then Enter to save and CtrlX to exit. However, feel free to choose whatever text editor you like. In the below screenshot we use Vim.)

Edit as desired, but at minimum set DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME.

We renamed DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME to discourse.techapj.com, this means that we want to host our instance of Discourse on http://discourse.techapj.com/. You'll need to modify your DNS records to reflect the IP address and preferred URL address of your server.

Mail Setup

Email is critical to Discourse. We strongly recommend configuring mail settings before bootstrapping.

If you already have a mail server, put your existing mail server credentials in the app.yml file.
Otherwise, create a free account on Mandrill (or Mailgun, or Mailjet), and put your mail credentials (available via the Mandrill dashboard) in the app.yml file. The settings you want to change are DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT, DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD.
Be sure you remove the comment character and space # from the beginning of these mail configuration lines!
Don't forget to set the SPF and DKIM records up for your domain name. In Mandrill, that's under Sending Domains, View DKIM/SPF setup instructions.
The name of your droplet is your reverse PTR record, so rename your droplet to forum.example.com so the PTR record correctly reflects your domain name.

Add Your SSH Key

If you successfully generated the SSH key as described earlier, get it:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the entire output and paste it into the ssh_key setting in the app.yml file.

Bootstrap Discourse

Be sure to save the app.yml file, and begin bootstrapping Discourse:

./launcher bootstrap app

This command may take some time, so be prepared to wait. It is automagically configuring your Discourse environment.

After that completes, start Discourse:

./launcher start app

Congratulations! You now have your own instance of Discourse, accessible via the domain name you entered in app.yml earlier.

You can also access it by visiting the server IP address directly, e.g. http://192.168.1.1.

Log In and Become Admin

Sign into your Discourse instance. If you configured DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and your email matches, your account will be made Admin by default.

If your account was not made admin, try SSH'ing into your container (assuming you entered your SSH key in the app.yml file):

./launcher ssh my_container
sudo -iu discourse
cd /var/www/discourse
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails c
u = User.last
u.admin = true
u.save

This will manually make the first user an admin.

Post-Install Maintenance

We believe most small and medium size Discourse installs will be fine with the recommended 2 GB of RAM. However, if you are using the absolute minimum 1 GB of RAM, or your forum is growing you may want to set up a swap file just in case.

To upgrade Discourse to the latest version, visit /admin/docker, refresh the page a few times (yes, seriously) and then press the Upgrade button at the top. View the live output at the bottom of your browser to see when things are complete. You should see:

Killed sidekiq
Restarting unicorn pid: 37

Then you know it's complete. (Yes, we will be improving this process soon!)

If anything needs to be improved in this guide, feel free to ask on meta.discourse.org, or even better, submit a pull request.

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