Your customers are already talking. Give them somewhere to do it with you.
We install Discourse (the forum platform trusted by Figma, GitHub, and Mozilla) and integrate it with your website. Not a Facebook Group. Not a Slack workspace. A community you own, under your brand, with your data.
Social media is borrowed ground
The businesses that build for the long term own the relationship.
When your community lives on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Reddit, you're a tenant. The platform changes the algorithm, buries your posts, or decides one day that your category of content gets less reach, and there's nothing you can do about it. You don't own the member list. You don't control the experience. You can't message your members without paying for ads. If the platform disappears, so does your community.
An owned community changes the economics of your business. Members of branded communities spend 19% more than non-members. (Source: Rosetta Consulting) They churn at lower rates, refer more customers, and generate peer-to-peer support content that reduces your support load. The conversations they have are indexed by search engines and bring in new members for free. This is infrastructure, not a marketing channel.
The platform the best communities are built on
Discourse powers the communities for Figma, GitHub, Mozilla, DigitalOcean, Laravel, Notion, and thousands of others. There's a reason the most respected communities chose it.
Every thread is indexed by Google
Unlike Facebook Groups or Slack, Discourse is public and SEO-friendly by design. When your members ask and answer questions, those threads appear in Google search results. New members find your community because they searched for help, not because you paid to reach them.
Email digests that pull people back
Discourse automatically emails members a digest of what they missed: new topics, popular discussions, activity in categories they follow. People return because they're reminded there's something worth reading, not because you had to manually write a newsletter.
Trust levels that reduce moderation workload
Discourse has a built-in trust system: new members are limited at first, and earn more capabilities as they contribute. It automatically filters out a lot of spam and low-effort posts, which lightens (but doesn't replace) active moderation. Someone still needs to keep an eye on the community.
Private spaces for paying members
Groups and category permissions let you create spaces only certain members can see: a VIP lounge, a paid membership tier, an internal team channel, or early access for your best customers. Discourse supports all of it natively, without needing a separate tool.
One login, across your whole site
With single sign-on, members use the same account for your website, your shop, and your community. No separate registration for the forum. No duplicate accounts. When someone is logged in to your site, they're logged in everywhere, which removes the biggest barrier to joining.
Mobile-first from the start
Discourse was designed to work well on a phone, not adapted to work on a phone. Members can follow threads, reply, and get notifications from any device. The experience doesn't degrade on mobile the way older forum software does.
Everything from server to launch: handled
Discourse is powerful, but setting it up correctly takes real technical work. We do that part.
Installation and hosting
We install Discourse on a dedicated server and configure it for performance, security, and backups. You get a community that runs on your own infrastructure (not on Discourse's shared hosting) with full control and no per-seat licensing fees eating into your margins as you grow.
Your subdomain, your brand
Your community lives at community.yourdomain.com, not on discourse.org. We configure the domain, match the visual style to your main site, set the color scheme and logo, and make the forum feel like a natural extension of your brand rather than a bolt-on from another company.
SSO integration with your website
We connect Discourse to your existing login system so members use one account across your whole site. If you have a shop, a membership area, or a client portal, your users won't need to register again. Single sign-on is one of the most meaningful improvements you can make to member experience, and it requires careful configuration to get right.
Category structure designed for your community
A community without clear categories becomes an unreadable wall of posts. We work with you to design a category structure that matches how your members think and what they actually want to talk about, with the right permissions, descriptions, and welcome messages on each.
Email and notification setup
Discourse relies heavily on email: for account confirmation, notifications, and digest delivery. Poor email setup means members miss notifications, digests land in spam, and activity drops off. We configure a reliable transactional email provider and test deliverability before you invite your first member.
Launch kit and first posts
An empty forum is a ghost town. We help you seed the community before launch: writing pinned welcome posts, creating the first few discussion threads, and setting up automated welcome messages for new members. When your first real members arrive, there's already something to read and respond to.
Get your community live, then grow it
Initial setup gets you a fully configured, ready-to-invite Discourse installation. Ongoing management keeps it healthy and evolving as your membership grows. Both are scoped and quoted as part of your custom project, independent of any Website Sherpa website plan.
Initial setup: ready for your first members
- Discourse installation on a dedicated server
- Custom subdomain (community.yourdomain.com)
- Brand-matched design (colors, logo, fonts)
- Category structure designed for your community
- Email and notification configuration
- SSL and automated backups
- Welcome posts and launch kit
- Basic moderation settings configured
Ongoing: community management
- Scoped separately, on top of setup:
- SSO integration with your website login
- Plugin installation and configuration
- Discourse updates and server maintenance
- New category and group setup as you grow
- Private member groups (VIP, paid tiers, teams)
- Technical support for member issues
What people ask before they start
Why Discourse and not a Facebook Group or a Slack workspace?
Facebook Groups and Slack are fast to set up but you own nothing. The member list, the conversation history, the ability to contact members: all of it belongs to the platform. Discourse is open-source software that runs on your server. Your data stays yours, your community URL is your domain, and you can export everything if you ever want to move. The conversations are also indexed by search engines, which Facebook and Slack conversations are not.
Is Discourse expensive to run?
The software itself is free. It's open source. The cost is the server it runs on, typically $20–$50/month depending on your community size, plus our setup and ongoing management fees, quoted as part of your project. Compare that to Slack (which charges per active member and loses message history on free plans) or Circle or Mighty Networks (which charge $80–$400/month). For a community of any meaningful size, self-hosted Discourse is significantly cheaper per member.
Will it work if my community is small to start?
Yes. Every large community started small. The key at the beginning is seeding good conversations and inviting your most engaged existing customers first: the people most likely to post, not just lurk. We help you with that launch strategy. Discourse handles everything from 10 members to 100,000 on the same setup.
Can I charge for access to parts of the community?
Yes. Discourse Groups can be set to require manual approval or a specific trust level, which means you can keep certain categories private for paying customers. Membership verification (where an active subscription grants access and a lapsed one revokes it) can be scoped into the ongoing management engagement. The integration depends on how you handle payments, but it's a well-trodden path.
What if my members aren't technical? Is it easy to use?
Discourse is designed for everyday users, not developers. The interface looks closer to a modern messaging app than old-school forum software. Members can post, reply, quote, mention others, and upload images without any instructions. The onboarding flow guides new users through their first steps automatically.
Do you handle Discourse updates and maintenance?
As part of an ongoing management engagement, yes. Discourse releases regular updates, and keeping the installation current matters for security. We handle server maintenance, apply updates, and monitor uptime so you don't have to think about it. With setup only, we hand over a fully working installation and you manage it from there, or add ongoing management later if you'd rather not.
Your audience, your platform, your rules.
We install, host, and support your Discourse community end-to-end, so you focus on your members, not the server. Scoped and quoted as a custom project.
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