Amazing features your community will love

We’re reimagining what a modern discussion platform should be

Conversations, not pages

Why break conversations into awkward and arbitrary pages, where you have to constantly find the Next Page button? We’ve replaced all that with the power of just-in-time loading. Want to read more? Keep scrolling down.

Chat in real time

Create channels for community members to chat more informally and build relationships. When things come up that belong in a more discoverable place, chat messages can be quoted in topics where the discussion can continue over time.

A personal touch

A custom sidebar and deliberately chosen user preferences allow community members to fine-tune their experience on your site to best meet their needs while out-of-the-box defaults and site settings allow you to configure the default experience for your community.

Simple, but with context

Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Expand context at the bottom and top of each post, and also in quotes, to reveal the full conversation without losing your place.

Born mobile, born to touch

Discourse was designed for high resolution touch devices, with a built-in mobile layout. Read or post from your laptop, tablet, and phone in your browser of choice, or our Discourse iOS app and Discourse Android app.

discourse on a mobile phone

Links automatically expand

Want to share a cool link you found? Just paste it in on a single line and we’ll make it awesome. Links to Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, GitHub, Twitter, Flickr, and hundreds of other popular websites automatically expand to provide additional context and information.

Single sign-on

Seamlessly integrate Discourse with your existing site’s login system with easy, robust single sign on.

single sign on example button

Trust system

As members become trusted regulars over time, they earn abilities to help maintain their community.

a badge granting a user more forum control

Community moderation

Let the community suppress spam and dangerous content, and amicably resolve disputes.

example of a flagged post

Spam blocking

Built in Akismet spam protection and heuristics including new user sandboxing, user flag blocking, and standard nofollow.

example of a spam post

Social login

Easily add common social logins like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and GitHub.

social login buttons

Summarize topics

Use the Summarize button to condense long topics to just the most interesting and popular posts.

a summarize post button

Badges

Encourage positive community behaviors through the included set of badges, or add your own custom badges.

a badge for the number of likes a user recevied

Emoji

Access a searchable list of standard emoji. Choose from four different emoji sets, or define your own custom emoji.

a list of emoji

Reply via email

When you aren’t active on the website, your notifications will be automatically sent to you via email. Reply via email from anywhere, on any device.

an email reply

Two-factor authentication

Enhance your account security with the free Android or iOS authenticator apps.

a summarize post button

Admin dashboard

Your most relevant and essential community health metrics are only a click away.

a summarize post button

Comprehensive API

Anything you see on screen, you can also do via an API call. Discourse is a JavaScript app that talks to our Discourse API.

javascript code

100% open source

Incorporate Discourse into your site with complete confidence – the code belongs to everyone.

discourse’s github page

One-click upgrades

Automatic notification of new versions in the dashboard, with a one-click web upgrade process.

the discourse upgrade button

Plus so much more!

Configure

  • Translations for 46 languages and counting
  • SEO optimized for Google indexing and searching
  • Markdown, BBCode, and HTML formatting in posts
  • Automatic backups
  • CDN support
  • Blog integration
  • Automatic & custom avatars
  • Email invitations
  • Mailing list support
  • Dark mode and WCAG color scheme

Discuss

  • Anonymous posting
  • File attachments
  • Hide spoilers
  • Embeddable polls
  • Desktop notifications
  • Auto-save drafts
  • Post revision history
  • Personal messaging
  • Drag & drop image uploads
  • Collaboratively edit wiki posts

Admin

  • Inline & bulk moderation
  • Moderator flag queue
  • Sitewide alerts & pinned topics
  • Make your site invite-only
  • Easily add private spaces
  • Site analytics dashboard
  • Post approval
  • Self-managing usergroups
  • Promote popular topics
  • Incoming & outgoing link tracking

Extend the functionality of your Discourse community with our officially supported plugins

Explore our plugins directory

Are you ready to start your community?

Try it free for 14 days