Just like this comment.mayfirst.org we are using, is it possible for MayFirst to host other sites for different purposes? Or is it somehow possible to “Split” or “Share” this Discourse instance so there will be mote venues for different topics?
I think there is a dire need for a worker coop / solidarity economy discussion site for Japan in Japanese language. (If Discourse has a built-in translation feature, that would be great, too)
I don’t know whether they need their own channels or can be combined, but I would like to know if we can use MayFirsrt to host it.
I noticed that many Discourse hosting sites are very expensive (say $100/mo) and I wonder if we can reduce the cost by sharing the same server, etc.
Yes - It is possible to share this discourse instance. We can create a category for you to use, and you can make it private or public. However, only people with a May First username/password can login and post to it. So, if you are looking for a place for a small, pre-defined team to discuss something, it will work well. But if you are looking for a public space to have a discussion with non-members, it probably is not the right choice.
Discourse is difficult to host - it’s a very complex system with many software dependencies. so I am not suprised that corporate providers charge a lot of money. There’s an alternative called Flarum that seems to offer many of the benefits but in a far simpler to manage package that could probably be installed on a shared May First server.
If you are interested, we could direct you on how to set that up in a regular hosting order. If you’d like help with that - posting a ticket at https://support.mayfirst.org/ is the way to go (we are trying to keep this spot as a place for discussion, but it’s hard to properly manage support requests so our support tracker is the place to post such a request).
Just to weigh in here, our org runs two discourse sites (externally) and we’ve found it to be excellent for organizing lots of volunteers and community members. I’ve come to see it as a key tool for our organizing and as we develop new programs, it keeps coming up. The way email notifications and permissions work is so useful… I could go on…
The kind of folks we have on those sites are without Mayfirst logins and setting that up would create a pretty high threshold for them and us.
Flarum looks promising, but the level of support and community is excellent with Discourse and it looks like Flarum is still in Beta?
Is there a future scenario where MayFirst could host instances of Discourse? Even at some kind of additional cost?
It is possible if you go with your own dedicated virtual server (which is why @yasuaki discovered it is so expensive). Discourse requires it’s own full virtual server. Those consume a lot of resources, so it makes it much harder to just spin them up and down as needed (flarum, in contrast, could be run this way).
Hi all, I would like to know where are we on 2026 with this? It reaaaally would be helpful to have an specific instance of Discourse for a job project I´m going to start, and also would be a new membership for us. Is it still so difficult to run @jamie ?
Unfortunately there is not a lot of change on this topic. I don’t think we will be in a position to setup hosted discourses for people outside of members getting their own dedicated VPS.
Discourse is a fairly complicated suite of tools that have to work together - and Discourse manages that complexity by automating everything. So, most of the time, it means I just click a button to upgrade and most of the time it works. But sometimes it breaks which requires some time consuming interventions.
Realistically I don’t think we are in a position to really make this happen reliably for members at any kind of scale.
It’s not part of the membership agreement, so I can’t make any promises, but always happy to help when I can. But more importantly, the procedure for installing Discourse typically requires nothing more than root access and the ability to ssh into a server and paste in a command and then answer a bunch of questions.
We’re looking at making a Discourse instance in another VPS and there’s a tech called Cloudron that seems to make this easier - maybe something to consider? https://www.cloudron.io/
I’ve never used cloudron - if you are just hosting one instance of discourse, Cloudron might make things more complicated rather than easier. It seems like a system for installing and managing many web apps - so it adds a layer of complexity rather than simplifying. Also, our friends at Cloud 68 might be worth considering - they provide a similar approach to Clourdron but they handle all the upgrades and provide actual human help if something goes wrong.