Success!
My homelab bête noire has been Discourse—the best forum software I have ever used. I used to have an install on a Google server, until it went all kajagoogoo. That was OK at the time: I replaced it with Reddit one semester, then Packback came along and replaced both pretty well. That said, Packback is pretty expensive—around $40 per student per semester—so I’ve often thought about putting Discourse in the homelab as a free alternative that is fun to use. Well, this was only a dream until yesterday when I finally got Discourse working in the homelab! W00t!
The problem was always getting Discourse working behind my proxy manager. I could never get the certificates working correctly—at least I think that was the reason. While I tried to get this working all day yesterday using some pretty good instructions, the site would just not work. I kept getting a “too many redirects” error when trying to load the install. I just couldn’t figure it out.
When I was about to give up again, I found these instructions that walked me through setting up a Cloudflare Tunnel, so I didn’t need to mess with a proxy. After a bit of fumbling—some of the instructions are a bit cryptic—I’m happy to say I now have Discourse running on a homelab server: https://forum.grlucas.net/! I think that deserves another w00t!
I’ve spent most of this morning setting up the forum. I’ve made it private to alleviate student concerns and potential FERPA violations. I mainly installed it for my upcoming sections of NMAC 5108, so student have a place to collaborate, but also for a place where they can keep their daily journals. I think it will work well. It’s pretty sophisticated software with plenty of options to configure. I’ll spend a bit more time with it, but I plan to begin using it in March with my graduate students and in the summer with my undergrads. I’m kind of getting tired of Packback, anyway.
While I’m still getting to know the software, I discovered it has a built-in tutorial for how to use the forum. By working through the whole thing, I earned the certificate displayed on this page. Too cool.