Important Community Announcement: The Future of the Forum is in Our Hands!

Would be a shame to lose the history here.

Also its a massive pain that I can’t read discord with a VPN.

Until we’re fully dogfooding was looking in to the following…

Was trying to find gofundme type services but more suited to the job.

Something that also support anonymous donations.

Maybe we could have a running months left at the top of the page.

Maybe a wikipedia “Donate $2” popup when low on funds

Open Collective shows current balance and donations and payment of bills for a community.

oh boy, you can tell we are in the middle of a bear market.

Discourse is SO much nicer to use than Discord - it is sad that the forum is going away . .

BraveAI says this … Maid staff will need to provide a backup and make it available.

To migrate a Discourse instance to your own server, you must first put the old forum in read-only mode and generate a full backup including uploads and thumbnails via the Admin panel.

Migration Steps

• Prepare the New Server: Install Docker and Git, then run the Discourse setup script (./launcher bootstrap app) to create the initial container structure on your new machine.

• Transfer the Backup: Copy the generated .tar.gz backup file from the old server’s /var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default directory to the same path on your new server using SCP or rsync.

• Restore Data: On the new server, enable restoration via the command line (cd /var/discourse && ./launcher enter app && discourse enable_restore) and run discourse restore <filename.tar.gz>.

• Finalize Configuration: Edit /var/discourse/containers/app.yml to match your domain settings, then run ./launcher rebuild app.

• Switch DNS: Update your DNS A records to point to the new server’s IP address, ensuring the DNS TTL is set low (e.g., 30 seconds) beforehand to minimize downtime.

Important Note: If you are moving to a server with significantly different hardware specs, running discourse-setup again or manually tuning app.yml for resources (like unicorn workers) is recommended. Themes and plugin settings are included in the backup, but plugins themselves must be reinstalled or present in the app.yml definitions.

For a production Discourse server in 2026, the sweet spot for most communities is a VPS with 4 GB RAM and 2 vCPUs. While the absolute minimum is lower, this configuration ensures smooth performance for up to 5,000 daily active users (DAU) and provides enough headroom for background jobs and updates.

Recommended Specifications by Scale

We gave @Dimitar access to do that. He said he already backed it up.

Rusty, if the forum does go down, I recommend that Maidsafe puts a page in place that can redirect folks seeking to find ways to communicate (e.g. the discord community) and doesn’t just leave a stub/404.

We are not going to be funding any more forum hosting. I believe a redirect would require that. Our official website has the link to Discord and X.

As long as Maidsafe owns the domain https://forum.autonomi.community/, then a page could be put up. It doesn’t matter if the forum hosting is gone.

Why won’t maidsafe fund it? Isn’t this good for boosting their user base , development and spreading word? Also the irony of Autonomi deleting the forum and all its history and only allowing people to use discord (the worst data collector of all platforms) is mental.

Why not fund it? Whats the reason? Do we get one? Is it because you want to delete the history so nobody remembers what maidsafe’s original vision was? Its ironic Autonomi of all people should chose this path. And worse still, why force people engaged with the project to use the worst data hoarding privacy breaching platforms on earth with X and Discord? What is autonomi about anymore?

It should be possible to convert the data from this forum to a more conventional php based forum that can be hosted cheaply. We would still need a domain name, or otherwise can be posted as a tor hidden service with no domain name needed.

If the data can be made available, I can take a crack at it. No promises, but should be doable.

Here’s what deepseek said about it:

Tools for Migrating Discourse → Self-Hosted Forum Software

1. ernestdefoe/importer — Discourse → Flarum 2 (Recommended)

This is the most modern and actively maintained tool. It’s a Flarum 2 extension that imports from Discourse (and 10 other platforms) directly from the admin panel.

• Source: github.com/ernestdefoe/importer (MIT license)
• Install: composer require ernestdefoe/importer
• How it works: Connects to Discourse’s PostgreSQL database (needs pdo_pgsql PHP extension), reads users/categories/topics/posts, and converts them to Flarum’s native rich-text format
• Resumable: Batched, survives browser tab closes and connection drops
• No SSH required: Runs entirely from the browser admin panel (has a CLI too for very large forums)
• Active: GitHub repo was updated as recently as July 2026

Why Flarum is a good alternative: Runs on 1 GB RAM / $5/mo VPS (vs Discourse’s 4 GB minimum). PHP/Laravel stack runs on shared hosting. MIT license.

2. nodebb-plugin-import + nodebb-plugin-import-discourse — Discourse → NodeBB

• Main plugin: github.com/akhoury/nodebb-plugin-import
• Discourse exporter: github.com/akhoury/nodebb-plugin-import-discourse
• How it works: A two-part system — the exporter module reads Discourse’s PostgreSQL database and provides an API the importer plugin consumes
• Caveat: This project is older (targeting NodeBB v1.x, last referenced schema from 2018). Would need testing against current NodeBB versions.

Why NodeBB is a good alternative: Real-time features (WebSockets), moderate resources (~2 GB RAM), Node.js stack, 200+ plugins.

3. gConverter — Paid Migration Service

gconverters.com offers Discourse → many targets (wpForo, XenForo, phpBB, MyBB, Flarum, NodeBB, etc.) as a paid service. They claim 4,200+ migrations completed. Pay after approval.

4. DIY / Custom Script Approach

Discourse stores everything in PostgreSQL and has a REST API + data export features. You can:

• Dump the PostgreSQL database and write a script to transform it into the target platform’s schema
• Use Discourse’s API to export topics/users programmatically
• Start from Discourse’s built-in GDPR/user data exports

Quick Comparison: Best Self-Hosted Alternatives

Bottom Line

If you want a free, maintained, one-click migration tool, go with ernestdefoe/importer to migrate Discourse → Flarum 2. It’s the only actively-maintained tool that specifically supports Discourse as a source and runs without SSH or command-line access. Flarum itself will cut your hosting bill to a fraction of Discourse’s requirements.