discourse/docs/INSTALL-digital-ocean.md

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 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 LTS x64. We always recommend using the current LTS distribution.

Once you complete the above steps you will receive a mail from Digital Ocean with the root password to the Droplet. (However, if you use SSH keys, you may not need a password to log in.)

Access your newly created 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, which was in the email Digital Ocean sent you when the Droplet was set up. Enter it.

Install Git

sudo apt-get install git

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. This cannot be done after bootstrapping the app.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"

(We want the default settings, so when asked to enter a file in which to save the key, just press enter. Via GitHub's SSH 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.

Finish installing Docker:

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

Create a /var/docker folder where all the Docker related stuff will reside:

mkdir /var/docker

Clone the Official Discourse Docker Image into this /var/docker folder:

git clone https://github.com/SamSaffron/discourse_docker.git /var/docker

Switch to your 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 this newly copied app.yml:

nano containers/app.yml

(We recommend Nano because it works like a typical GUI text editor, just use your arrow keys. Hit CtrlO to save and CtrlX to exit. However, feel free to use whatever text editor you like. In the below screenshot we use Vim.)

Modify the file as desired, but at minimum you should set 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/. You'll need to modify your DNS records to reflect the IP address and preferred domain name of your server.

#Mail Setup

Email is critical to Discourse. We strongly recommend configuring mail settings before bootstrapping your app.

• If you already have a mail server, put your existing mail server credentials in the app.yml file.

• Otherwise, create a free account on Mandrill, and put your Mandrill credentials (available via the Mandrill dashboard) in the app.yml file. The settings you want to change are DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT, DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME, DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD.

#Add Your SSH Key

If you successfully generated the SSH key as described earlier, get it:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the entire output and paste it into the ssh_key setting in the app.yml file.

Bootstrap Discourse

Be sure to save the app.yml file, and begin bootstrapping Discourse:

sudo ./launcher bootstrap app

This command may take some time, so be prepared to wait. It is automagically configuring your Discourse environment.

After that completes, start Discourse:

sudo ./launcher start app

Congratulations! You now have your own instance of Discourse, accessible via the domain name you entered in app.yml file at the time of setup.

You can also access it by visiting the server IP address directly, e.g. 192.168.1.1.

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.

If your account was not made admin, 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

This will manually make the first user an admin.

If anything needs to be improved in this guide, feel free to ask on meta.discourse.org, or even better, submit a pull request.