discourse README

The project's README from github.com/discourse/discourse. As one markdown file: README.md.

The online home for your community.

github-readme

You can self-host Discourse on your own infrastructure. But if you'd rather skip the setup, maintenance, and server management, we offer official Discourse hosting.

👉 Learn more about Discourse hosting

Discourse is a 100% open-source community platform for those who want complete control over how and where their site is run.

Our platform has been battle-tested for over a decade and continues to evolve to meet users’ needs for a powerful community platform.

With Discourse, you can:

To learn more, visit discourse.org and join our support community at meta.discourse.org.

Here are just a few of the incredible communities using Discourse:

discourse-communities

👉 Discover more communities using Discourse

Development

To get your environment set up, follow one of the setup guides:

Before you get started, ensure you have the following minimum versions: Ruby 3.4+, PostgreSQL 15, Redis 7.

For more information, check out the Developer Documentation.

Setting up Discourse

If you want to set up a Discourse forum for production use, see our Discourse Install Guide.

If you're looking for official hosting, see discourse.org/pricing.

Requirements

Discourse supports the latest, stable releases of all major browsers and platforms:

Browsers Tablets Phones
Apple Safari iPadOS iOS
Google Chrome Android Android
Microsoft Edge
Mozilla Firefox

Additionally, we aim to support Safari on iOS 16.4+.

Built With

Plus lots of Ruby Gems, a complete list of which is at /main/Gemfile.

Contributing

Build Status

Discourse is 100% free and open source. We encourage and support an active, healthy community that accepts contributions from the public – including you!

Before contributing to Discourse:

  1. Please read the complete mission statements on discourse.org. Yes we actually believe this stuff; you should too.
  2. Read and sign the Electronic Discourse Forums Contribution License Agreement.
  3. Dig into CONTRIBUTING.MD, which covers submitting bugs, requesting new features, preparing your code for a pull request, etc.
  4. Always strive to collaborate with mutual respect.
  5. Not sure what to work on? We've got some ideas.

We look forward to seeing your pull requests!

Security

We take security very seriously at Discourse; all our code is 100% open source and peer reviewed. Please read our security guide for an overview of security measures in Discourse, or if you wish to report a security issue.

Security fixes are listed in the release notes for each version.

The Discourse Team

The original Discourse code contributors can be found in 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 blog and GitHub's list of contributors.

Copyright 2014 - 2026 Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2.0 (or later); you may not use this work except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License in the LICENSE file, or at:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Discourse logo and “Discourse Forum” ®, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.

Accessibility

To guide our ongoing effort to build accessible software we follow the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If you'd like to report an accessibility issue that makes it difficult for you to use Discourse, email [email protected]. For more information visit discourse.org/accessibility.

Dedication

Discourse is built with love, Internet style.

For over a decade, our amazing community has helped shape Discourse into what it is today. Your support, feedback, and contributions have been invaluable in making Discourse a powerful and versatile platform.

We’re deeply grateful for every feature request, bug report, and discussion that has driven Discourse forward. Thank you for being a part of this journey—we couldn’t have done it without you!

discourse (discourse/discourse)

Searching Database…

48K ·GitHub
Discourse
What is this?Discourse is a 100% open-source community discussion platform that lets you run forums with topics, built-in real-time chat, and a plugin/theme ecosystem.
Is this a library I embed, or a full app I deploy?It is a complete, self-contained web application you deploy and run on your own server, not a library to import into another project.
How do I get a dev environment or a production forum running?For development, follow one of the setup guides (Docker, VS Code Dev Container recommended, or CLI guides for macOS/Ubuntu/Windows). For a production forum, use the separate Discourse Install Guide, or pick official hosting instead.
What do I need installed before running Discourse?You need Ruby 3.4+, PostgreSQL 15, and Redis 7 as the minimum versions, plus Node 20+ and pnpm for the frontend tooling.
Is the dev setup also fine for running a real forum?No, production deployment is a separate, more involved path documented in its own Discourse Install Guide rather than the quick dev setup guides.
What browsers and devices does it support for end users?The latest stable releases of Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on desktop, plus iPadOS/Android tablets and iOS/Android phones, with Safari on iOS 16.4+ specifically targeted.
What can plugins add to a Discourse forum?Plugins extend Discourse with things like AI-powered chatbots (Discourse AI) and advanced tooling such as the Data Explorer plugin for running SQL analysis directly against your community data.
What is Discourse built with under the hood?The backend is a Ruby on Rails app that responds RESTfully in JSON, the frontend is an Ember.js app talking to that API, PostgreSQL is the main data store, and Redis is used for caching and transient data.
Why would I pay for hosting instead of self-hosting?Self-hosting gives you full control but means handling setup, maintenance, and server management yourself; official Discourse hosting removes that overhead if you'd rather not run the infrastructure.
What are similar projects?forem, NodeBB, e621, diaspora, answer, sure, spectrum, chatwoot
Which topics is it in?forum, rails, gpl, community, ruby, chat, theme, accessibility, redis, postgresql, plugin, database
Creator
discourse
Size
1.2 GB
Stars
48K
Updated
CommitOct 16
Age
13y
Commits · 90 Days