Discourse (software)

Not to be confused with Discord (software).

Discourse

Developer(s)	Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc.
Initial release	August 26, 2014 (2014-08-26)
Stable release	3.4.3  / 29 April 2025
Repository	github.com/discourse/discourse
Written in	Ruby, JavaScript
Operating system	Linux
Available in	Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese
Type	Forum software
License	GNU GPL version 2 (or later)
Website	www.discourse.org

Discourse is an open source Internet forum system. Features include threading, categorization and tagging of discussions, configurable access control, live updates, expanding link previews, infinite scrolling, and real-time notifications. It is customizable via its plugin architecture and its theming system.

Discourse was released on August 26, 2014, by its founders Jeff Atwood, Robin Ward, and Sam Saffron.

The client side application is written in EmberJS. The server side is written in Ruby on Rails and backed by a Postgres database and Redis cache. The source code is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

The default homepage in Discourse

Features

Categorization

Similar discussions can be organized under categories. Admins can create categories, add category descriptions and logos, and control access to topics in the category. Discourse provides granular control over read/write permissions.

Discourse also supports sub-categorization or nested categories. Subcategories are categories in themselves so they can be controlled in the same manner as parent categories. The only difference is the parent-child relationship.