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The deployment of Discourse is simple thanks to the Docker Image, all you need is SSH access to a virtual cloud server. In this guide I'll assume that you are using Digital Ocean, although these steps will work on other cloud servers as well.
The below guide assumes that you have no knowledge of Ruby/Rails or Linux shell, so it will be detailed. Feel free to skip steps which you think you are comfortable with.
Create new Digital Ocean Droplet
Discourse recommends a minimum of 1 GB Ram, so that's what we will go with. We'll use discourse as the Hostname.
We will install Discourse on Ubuntu 12.04.3 x64 LTS as this is recommended in official documentation.
Once you complete the above steps you will receive a mail from Digital Ocean with the root password to the Droplet. (However, if you entered your SSH keys, you won't need a password to log in).
Access your newly created Droplet
To access the Droplet, type the following command in your terminal:
ssh root@192.168.1.1
Replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP address you got from Digital Ocean.
It will ask your permission to connect, type yes, then it will ask for the root password. The root password is in the email Digital Ocean sent you when the Droplet was set up. Type in that password to log in to your newly installed Ubuntu Server.
Install Git
To install Git:
sudo apt-get install git
and you are good to go.
Generate SSH Key
** We highly recommend setting a SSH key, because you may need to access the Rails console for debugging purposes. This is only possible if you have SSH access preconfigured. It cannot be done after bootstrapping the app. **
Generate the SSH key:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"
ssh-add id_rsa
(We want the default settings, so when asked to enter a file in which to save the key, just press enter. Taken from this guide)
Install Docker
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-raring linux-headers-generic-lts-raring
Reboot the server:
sudo reboot
This will log you out from your SSH session, so SSH in again:
ssh root@192.168.1.1
Replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP address you got from Digital Ocean.
Type in following commands:
sudo sh -c "wget -qO- https://get.docker.io/gpg | apt-key add -"
sudo sh -c "echo deb http://get.docker.io/ubuntu docker main\
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lxc-docker
Install Discourse
Congratulations! You've done all the hard work, now you have a brand new Ubuntu Server with Docker installed. Now let's install Discourse.
Create a /var/docker folder where all the docker related stuff will reside:
mkdir /var/docker
Clone the Official Discourse Docker Image in /var/docker folder:
git clone https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse_docker.git /var/docker
Make sure to copy and run the above command as is, otherwise you will face problem which I faced.
Switch to the Docker directory:
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
Modify the newly copied app.yml with our default variables:
nano containers/app.yml
(We recommend Nano because it works like a text editor, just use your arrow keys. Hit Ctrl-O to save and Ctrl-X to exit. However, you can use whatever text editor you like. In the below screenshot we use Vim.)
You will see something like:
Modify the file as desired, but for the sake of simplicity I will only modify two variables DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME.
Notice that I renamed DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME to discourse.techapj.com, this means that I want to host my instance of Discourse on http://discourse.techapj.com/, for this to work properly you will need to modify your DNS records.
#Mail Setup
This step is required to successfully set up mail settings for Discourse.
We recommended setting mail settings before bootstrapping your app. If you are an advanced user, put your mail credentials in the app.yml file.
If you are a beginner, create a free account on Mandrill, and put your Mandrill credentials (available on the Mandrill Dashboard) in the above file. The settings you want to change are DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT, DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD.
#Add SSH Key
If you successfully generated the SSH key as described earlier, get the generated key:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Copy the entire output and paste it into the ssh_key setting in the app.yml file.
Bootstrap Discourse
Save the app.yml file, and begin bootstrapping Discourse:
sudo ./launcher bootstrap app
This command may take some time, but it's doing all the hard work for you. This command is automagically configuring your Discourse environment.
After that completes, start Discourse:
sudo ./launcher start app
Congratulations! You have your own live instance of Discourse running on the host you provided in app.yml file at the time of setup.
You can also access your instance of Discourse by visiting your IP_ADDRESS.
Access Admin
Sign into your Discourse instance. If you configured DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS and your email matches, your account will be made Admin by default.
In case your account is not made admin (reported by some users), 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
Voil<E0>, you are now the admin of your own Discourse installation!
If anything needs to be improved in this guide, feel free to ask on meta.discourse.org, or even better, submit a pull request.