success stories Community Monetization: How eCommerceFuel Monetized their Niche Community At Discourse, our users form the heart of what we do. While our forum and online community tools are free and open-source, we also offer hosting services for those who want a smoother setup and management experience. When you factor in the additional costs of community managers and other staff,
updates Introducing AI Bot Our Discourse AI modules are designed to make your community experience easier, simpler, faster and hopefully, more fun. Today, we’re excited to announce the “AI Bot” module, which uses the power of conversation to help you get any of your questions, suggestions, recommendations, or comments answered in seconds. All
community management Online Community Engagement: Understanding Lurkers In a time where connection and belonging have never been more essential, online communities have the potential to offer members the remarkable gift of being seen and heard. These virtual spaces, with their vast reach and diverse participants, offer a platform where individuals can share, learn, and engage like never
success stories How STEM-Away® Connects Students from over 400 Colleges to Opportunities using Discourse Starting With a Vision Transitioning from academics to the professional world can present a challenge for students as they embark on the search for meaningful employment. Debaleena Das, founder of STEM-Away® , understands this challenge. When first imagining STEM-Away® , Debaleena envisioned a platform that empowers students with real-world experiences. STEM-Away® aims
updates Discourse 3.1 is here! Today, we are pleased to announce Discourse 3.1! Filled with features for members and admins alike, this version includes chat threads, a more customizable sidebar, improved search and numerous other improvements. This release is accompanied by the launch of our Discourse AI plugin, embracing the power of emerging large
success stories How Lawrence Systems Built a Thriving Community using Discourse Discourse allows you to build the community the way you want and it allows you very strong control over that community and I think you grow a better community. The internet has long served as a virtual gathering place where individuals seeking answers and information naturally gravitate towards forming communities.
technology Running Ruby 3.2's YJIT in Production at Discourse At Discourse, we have been eager to adopt YJIT ever since Shopify’s Ruby & Rails Infrastructure team declared it production-ready. After witnessing promising local benchmarks, we began running our production Rails applications with Ruby 3.2’s YJIT enabled on selected clusters in early May 2023. We then spent some
success stories How The OT Potential Club Used Discourse to Turn Their Low-Cost MVP into a Thriving Community. “I remember in our early discussion, we were looking at around $100,000 to build out the features we wanted. But, with Discourse, we were able to launch our MVP for $5,000 and start testing our idea right away!” Starting with a vision The OT Potential Club is a
updates Introducing Discourse AI We are happy to announce Discourse AI, the first step in integrating Artificial Intelligence with Discourse communities. Our new plugin is our one-stop solution offering both new features and enhancing existing ones. With this first release, we are shipping 7 different Discourse AI modules. These modules are designed to help
success stories Discourse Named One of the Americas' Fastest Growing Companies We are excited to announce that Discourse has been recognized as one of the Americas' fastest growing companies 2023 by Financial Times and Statista. This recognition is a testament to our commitment to providing a high-quality product and services to our customers and to the hard work and dedication of
success stories How Discourse Scaled to $10M ARR With Only 1 Salesperson It all began in 2013 with a vision – and a small team of engineers building a product that would disrupt the rapidly stagnating online forum space. While we didn’t specifically call it out at the time, we were going to market with a product-led sales strategy that we nurtured
updates Discourse Gives Back: 2022 Edition This past year we saw a lot of growth at Discourse. We added over 20 people to our team, and we worked hard to release a chat feature that was a huge step in allowing short, casual conversations without a third party plugin. We also worked towards releasing Discourse 3.
Sam Saffron and Sarah Hawk named Discourse Co-CEOs If I’ve learned anything about community in the last 10 years working at Discourse, it is that all lasting community comes from a place of shared leadership, not merely by the people at the top, but including everyone who regularly participates. Everyone deserves a voice, and to be heard.
success stories Why SailPoint Chose Discourse's Professional Services to lead their Redesign Discourse offers a variety of professional services to our Enterprise hosted customers. We had the opportunity to collaborate with SailPoint on their developer community redesign. We spoke with Jordan Violet, Head of Developer Relations at SailPoint about their experience with using Discourse and with our design team. Who is SailPoint?
updates Discourse 3.0 is Here! Today, we’re excited to announce the release of Discourse 3.0! We are bringing our customers and users some major new capabilities to enable communities to have thoughtful, purposeful discussions online. This new release includes real-time chat and user status to enable more informal communication, a customizable sidebar for
tools Looking Back with the Yearly Review Plugin As we enter the holiday season we start to look back and reflect on all the things that we have or haven’t accomplished (RIP my diet resolutions) in the last year. At Discourse our Yearly Review plugin creates a topic that shows the activity of your community members and
community management Dealing with Toxicity in Online Communities Online communities are places where people should be able to come together to share ideas and learn from each other in an environment that is safe and enjoyable to participate in. In healthy communities, members follow established guidelines and norms to create a culture of collaboration and mutual support. Occasionally
success stories How Elastic Bolsters Community Support with Discourse Automation The Elastic community has been around for longer than the company itself and includes users, contributors, and customers of Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack products which are available as “free and open” [https://www.elastic.co/about/free-and-open] as well as paid offerings. As a continually growing community, there are
community management Enough With the Water Bottles and T-shirts… Everyone loves good swag, but the key to motivating the behaviours you want to see in your community is focusing on intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic motivation is based on internal incentive such as pleasure or interest, so the key to rewarding appropriately is to support those behaviours. Humans
updates Our New Basic Plan Is Now Available. Try It Out Today! Today, we’re adding the Basic plan to our hosting lineup for groups, clubs, teams, and other small, private communities who need more than just a chat group to connect, keep in touch, collaborate, and create a shared long term memory. On the Basic plan you get all the powerful
success stories How Katalon Increased Community Engagement with Discourse Hosting Every day, customers are building, growing, and running successful communities powered by Discourse. Today, we’re highlighting one of them who improved how their company engages with their external community by upgrading to Discourse hosting. We had the opportunity to speak with Sara Leslie who heads up the community and
community management There are Two Types of Ideas – Bad Ideas and Ideas Worth Testing While push-button solutions are quick and simple, they prevent us from really understanding the landscape in front of us, identifying how to drive improvements, and exploring the optimal pathway to success. When I trot that title line out to people, it inevitably gets an intrigued look in response, but there
community management Not Everyone Wants to Talk to Your Community Manager The greatest asset any business can have is good relationships with their customers, and communities are a powerful environment to not just foster those relationships, but to do so in an environment where the world can see how engaging, supportive, and kind you are. So how do you do that?
community management Less vs. More: The Battle for Better Communities We live in a world where more is more. People are cranking out more content, posting more to social media, watching more movies, eating more food… abundance is the name of the game, it would seem. But… more doesn’t always mean better, especially when it comes to communities. A
updates Discourse Chat is now available. Try it out today! Discourse Chat [https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-chat/230881] is now available to everyone as an open beta and is 100% free and open source [https://github.com/discourse/discourse-chat], as always. At Discourse we have long believed in the importance of asynchronous communication for the long-term health of a
