Fully Managed, Secured, and Optimized Discourse

Launch an Instance

From AWS Marketplace, click Continue to Subscribe and then Continue to Configuration.

Choose the Recommended Instance Type

Select t2.medium or larger for optimal performance and stability.

Configure Security Group

Allow inbound traffic on the following ports:

• 22 (SSH) - for secure terminal access
• 80 (HTTP) - for initial setup and SSL verification
• 443 (HTTPS) - for secure Discourse access

Connect to the Instance

ssh -i <your-key.pem> ubuntu@<public-ip>

First-Boot Setup

On the first launch, initialization scripts automatically perform the following actions:

• Detect your server's public IP address
• Prompt for your Discourse domain name (e.g., forum.example.com)
• Validate your DNS A record to confirm it resolves correctly
• Request an admin email for login, SSL, and notifications
• Automatically generate a secure admin password
• Configure Apache virtual host and enable HTTPS
• Deploy the Discourse stack using Docker Compose with PostgreSQL and Redis

Configure DNS

• Add an A record in your DNS provider pointing your chosen domain (e.g., forum.example.com) to your instance's public IP.
• The setup will automatically verify DNS propagation across global resolvers before continuing.

Automatic SSL Setup

• Once DNS is verified, Certbot automatically issues and installs a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate.
• Apache is then reconfigured to serve Discourse securely over HTTPS.

Start or Restart Services

The Discourse stack starts automatically on boot. To verify or manually restart services:

cd /opt/app docker compose ps docker compose restart

Access Discourse

https://<your-domain>

Login Credentials

Default credentials are stored in the environment file:

cat /opt/app/.env

• Admin Username: root
• Admin Email: (value of ADMIN_EMAIL)
• Admin Password: (value of ADMIN_PASSWORD)

Environment File

All configuration details - domain, admin email and credentials are stored in:

/opt/app/.env