discourse-docker (and compose)

Features

Full dockerized environment
Start Discourse with 3 commands
HTTPS/SSL with letsencrypt out-of-the-box (if you are using a public domain)
Integrated NGINX redirections for forum migrations
Most common tasks are also dockerized for comfort

Test, Public and High Availability environments

Starting a discourse test environment in local

Estimated time: less than 2 minutes

Create a discourse.local entry in your /etc/hosts file

echo '127.0.0.1       discourse.local' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Create the docker compose network

sudo docker network create discourse_back

Start the services

sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=v2.5.0 docker-compose pull
sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=v2.5.0 docker-compose up -d

Wait some minutes until db migrations and static files precompilation finish

Create an admin account

sudo docker exec -it discourse_discourse-backend_1 bundle exec rake admin:create

Open https://discourse.local/latest in a browser

Note: HTTPS is used even in local with self-signed certificates

Running!

Starting a public environment

Estimated time: less than 10 minutes

Create the docker compose network

sudo docker network create discourse_back

Copy config/default to config/production

cp -R config/default config/production

Edit important environment vars like:

config/production/postgres.env

POSTGRES_PASSWORD={random-password}

config/production/discourse.env

DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME={your-public-domain}
DISCOURSE_DB_PASSWORD={postgres-defined-password}
DISCOURSE_SMTP_*={your-smtp-server-details}

config/production/discourse-proxy.env

DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME={your-public-domain}
LETSENCRYPT_ENABLED=true
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL_ISSUER={your-email}
LETSENCRYPT_STAGING_MODE=true

Note: Your website will run with HTTPS out of the box thanks to Lets Encrypt

Start the services

sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=v2.5.0 docker-compose pull
sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=v2.5.0 DISCOURSE_CONFIG_ENV=production docker-compose up -d

Wait some minutes until db migrations and static files precompilation finish

Create an admin account

sudo docker exec -it discourse_discourse-backend_1 bundle exec rake admin:create

Open https://{your-public-domain}/latest in a browser

Running!

High Availability environment

The "Public" environment will be just enough for most of forum owners, however it is not considered an enterprise-grade environment

Defining stronger setups is in the roadmap of this project

Defining NGINX rewrite redirects

If you need some manual redirections you can define a map file for nginx

Uncomment the next line in /docker-compose.yml:

- ./data/nginx/301-redirects-global.map:/etc/nginx/snippets/includes/301-redirects-global.map

Create the map file (./data/nginx/301-redirects-global.map) with the rewrite content:

map $request_uri $new_uri {
    /source1 /target1;
    /source2 /target2;
    /source3 /target3;
}

And start the server:

sudo docker-compose up -d

Note: For forum migrations, the import script must generate a map file with the redirections

Upgrading version

Note: Always check changelog for Breaking Compatibility changes

Make a Backup
Check config changes changes between your version and new version "config/default" <> "config/production
Download new version, delete compiled assets (css, js, etc...) and run the new version. Database schema will be migrated and assets will be compiled

sudo docker-compose stop
sudo docker-compose rm
sudo git pull
sudo git checkout ${new_version}
sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=${new_version} DISCOURSE_CONFIG_ENV=production docker-compose pull
sudo rm -rf data/assets
sudo DISCOURSE_DOCKER_VERSION=${new_version} DISCOURSE_CONFIG_ENV=production docker-compose up -d

Troubleshooting

Regenerating Lets Encrypt certificates

Just remove the certbot folder and start the services again

rm -rf data/certbot

Acknowledgment

To Pierre Ozoux, because the hard work done by him on Discourse Dockerization project has allowed me to save lot of hours

discoursedocker/discourse