Discourse

On Building Communities in Public: Why I Chose Discourse Over Discord

When I first started thinking about building a community around my writing, I did what any reasonable person would do: I looked at what everyone else was doing. Discord servers everywhere. Slack workspaces for the more “Serious Minded.” The occasional subreddit. Everyone seemed to have figured out the formula, and

people

Why Customer-Facing Experience Makes Better PMs

My first tech job was on the customer support desk for a telecommunications software company, where I spent my days answering support tickets and troubleshooting issues over the phone. As I moved through various support roles, I developed skills that would eventually lead me to my current career as a

community management

Community Acquisition Channels: Beyond "Build It and They Will Come"

Too many communities are launched with the “if you build it, they will come” mindset, only to find empty discussion boards and disengaged members. Successful community growth doesn’t happen by accident. You need a deliberate acquisition strategy that goes beyond vanity numbers and focuses on attracting the right people.

people

Behind the Scenes: Our 2025 Prague Meetup

Every year, we bring our fully remote team together for a week-long meetup. In September 2025, 87 of us gathered in Prague for an unforgettable experience in the only way we know how — chaotic, wholesome, and inspiring. As a company spread across 22 countries, we believe an in-person meetup isn&

community management

The Cost of Ephemeral Communication

Modern communication is built for the scroll. Think: Slack and Discord chats, disappearing messages, DMs, and social feeds where the stream moves too quickly to be reliably referenced later. The goal is speed and informality. Over the last decade, many communities and companies have followed the trend, moving from long-form

community management

Community Fragmentation: When Growth Becomes Your Obstacle

Only the most privileged of community practitioners will make it to retirement without experiencing the stress of chasing growth targets at least once in their career. The majority of us have had a close relationship with engagement statistics at some point, and what a fickle friend they can be. During

community management

Why Your Community Needs a Home, Not Just a Group Chat

We all crave connection. And when we want to bring people together, the easiest option is to spin up a group chat. It feels natural — everyone’s already on their phones, and the barrier to entry is basically zero. But if you’ve ever tried turning a Slack, Discord, or

online community

The end of community memory?

An experience I think a lot of us have these days in our interactions online, whether it be in the workplace, on social media, or even in real life is “We’ve had this conversation before…” It’s perfectly natural. Different subsets of people come together and stories get retold.

community management

The Hawk Origin Story (A Community Builder’s Privacy Paradox)

The Paradox Defined The privacy paradox is the delta that exists between our attitude towards protecting our personal privacy and reality of the way we behave online. Had I known about this incongruity when I first encountered the internet, I might have done things differently. My story started innocently enough

community management

How to Optimize Community Content for AI Discovery

AI has turned search into answers. People ask a question, get one synthesized response, and see a small handful of cited sources. If your community is one of those sources, you win trust, traffic, and pipeline. But how do you get there? How do you become a trusted destination for

community management

Building Communities That Think

Social media and instant messaging fundamentally changed how we talk to each other. The paragraph has ceded power to fast moving and ephemeral chat that inevitably leans toward the shallow and reactive. Easy and immediate access to information, has replaced depth with speed in both digital and offline conversations. We

community management

Avoid 6 common pitfalls when measuring the ROI of your community

Sometimes, knowing what not to do is a good way to get better at something. We’ve put together a list of the common missteps that community managers make when attempting to measure the ROI of their community. Avoiding the usual pitfalls of calculating the ROI of your community early

seo

SEO for AI: How Community Content Wins in New Search

The Search Revolution is Here We don’t click on links like we used to. When an AI summary appears on Google, we visit traditional links only half as often as when no summary is shown. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews have completely reshaped the SERP. Discovery

community management

Strategies for keeping children safe in your online community

We are at a point in the evolution of online behaviour where privacy and safety are finally getting the attention they deserve. Around the world, new laws and standards are changing how online spaces operate, especially when it comes to protecting children and other vulnerable users. Community managers and site

people

How we help enterprise communities do more with Discourse

We know that building community isn’t one-size-fits-all. Every organization has its own voice, values, and vision, and your community platform should be able to accommodate yours. Our out-of-the-box software is powerful, and when your community needs something custom, its flexibility means you’re not stuck waiting on a product

updates

Unboxing Discourse 3.5

After six months of steady improvements in our beta releases, we’re excited to announce our latest release, Discourse 3.5. This release, we focused on improving both the member and community management experience. We’ve rolled out Horizon, our sleek modern theme; a new composer option that makes creating

success stories

How Ask Discourse became Andela’s go-to AI community management assistant

At Discourse, we believe that community builders should always have a place to turn when they have questions. That’s why we created Ask Discourse, an AI-powered assistant that helps community admins solve problems, fine-tune settings, and grow their communities. For MC Elias, who leads one of the communities at

community management

How to prepare your community for a Discourse migration

A community rarely changes their platform lightly. The motivation is often to improve the experience, enhance functionality, and ensure the platform evolves alongside the community. Still, change is hard. When you announce to your online community that you’re moving to a new platform, you can almost feel the collective

success stories

How to Launch an Enterprise Community in 30 Days with Discourse

Building an enterprise community from scratch in just 30 days might sound impossible. It’s not. In fact, Jordan Violet, the Vice President of Community and Engagement at Netwrix, has done it. In this post, we’re walking through the steps Jordan took to launch a brand new community for

success stories

How Celigo doubled their community engagement after migrating to Discourse

We love celebrating our customers and their success with Discourse, but it’s especially exciting when that success comes quickly and shows the impact a strong community can have. After his LinkedIn post caught our attention, we connected with Tyler Lamparter at Celigo to hear about their community, why they

updates

Discourse and the Fediverse!

Two years ago, we started working on a plugin that brings Discourse and the Fediverse closer together. Discourse communities are online spaces that facilitate open collaboration and communication. The Fediverse offers ways to expand the reach of Discourse communities and help them build bridges with people active in other spaces,

community management

20 Community Metrics Explained

Understanding the language of community metrics gives you a leg up when communicating your community’s value to stakeholders. It also helps you identify what’s working, where to improve, and how to make data-driven decisions that strengthen your strategy. That starts with knowing the right metrics—what they measure,

community management

A guide to selecting the right metrics for your community

How do you know if your community is having a positive effect on the broader organization it represents? Where do you turn when you have to defend the existence of your community? Metrics. They tell the story of your community’s impact. If you are unsure where to begin, identifying

updates

Unpacking Discourse 3.4

Here at Discourse, we’re always striving to make community management easier. That’s why Discourse 3.4 has introduced a more consistent admin experience, a simplified signup and login flow, mobile app improvements, and AI-powered tools to fight spam and help manage your community. Beyond product improvements, we’ve

success stories

Sonar's 25-Cent Solution to Spam Detection

“As soon as we turned it on, it was night and day.” - Colin Mueller, Community Manager at Sonar, describing the impact of implementing Discourse AI to address a sudden and disruptive spam attack. About Sonar Sonar, the creators of SonarQube, have been helping developers write better code for over

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