discourse/docs/MIGRATION.md

Deploying Discourse on Docker is currently our recommended setup. It avoids many pitfalls installations have, such as misconfigured nginx, sub-optimal Ruby defaults and so on.

The Docker based setup ensures we are all on the same page when diagnosing installation issues and completely eradicates a class of support calls.

Today, all sites hosted by Discourse are on Docker.

This is a basic guide on how to move your current Discourse setup to a Docker based setup.

Getting started

First, get a blank site with working email installed. Follow the guide at https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker and install a new, empty Discourse instance.

Tips:

• Bind the web to a different port than port 80, if you are on the same box. Eg:

    expose:
      - "81:80"
  

• Be sure to enter your email in the developer email section, so you get admin:

    env:
      # your email here
      DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: 'my_email@email.com'
  

• Make sure email is setup and working by visiting /admin/email and sending a test email.

• Make sure you have ssh access to your container ./launcher ssh my_container must work.

If any of the above is skipped your migration will fail.

At the end of this process you will have a working website. Carry on.

Exporting and importing the old site

• Ensure you are running the absolute latest version of Discourse. We had bugs in the export code in the past, make sure you are on latest before attempting an export.

• On your current instance

  • go to /admin/backups and click on the button.
  • once the backup is done, you will be able to it.

• On your newly installed docker instance

  • enable the allow_restore site setting
  • refresh your browser for the change to be taken into account
  • go to /admin/backups and your backup.
  • once your upload is done, click on the button

• Destroy old container ./launcher destroy web

• Change port binding so its on 80

• Start a new container

Yay. You are done.