Discourse
Forums & communitiesA discussion forum and community site you can host yourself.
Discourse gives your community a home on a site you control, rather than a social platform or a chat app where answers get lost. Discussions are kept as topics that stay readable and findable later. It also has chat, email replies and moderation tools, so it can serve support, product or interest communities.
- Combines threaded discussion topics with built-in real-time chat.
- Trusted regulars earn abilities to help moderate, alongside a flag queue.
- Extends with themes and plugins, such as Discourse AI and Data Explorer.
What people use it for
Run a customer support community
Install Discourse on your own domain and invite customers to post their questions as topics. Connect it to your existing website login with single sign-on so customers do not need a new account. Members get email notifications and can reply by email, and badges recognise the people who help others.
Keep a busy community tidy with a small team
As regular members become trusted, they earn abilities to help maintain the community and hide spam or harmful posts. Moderators work through the flag queue, require approval for posts where needed, and use inline and bulk moderation. Official plugins add further tools, such as topic voting.
Move a mailing list into a forum
Set up the community and use its mailing list support so members can keep following discussions by email. Replies sent by email are added to the topic, so email users and web users share one conversation. Every discussion stays on the web, where it can be read and found later.