Backup Discourse On DigitalOcean

Protect your DigitalOcean Discourse Droplet from data loss with bullet proof backups

Why is it important to Backup your Discourse Droplet?

There are many reasons why you will be thankful you backed up your Discourse community. Even for small issues, it's a relief when you can just restore a snapshot and get back to business.

Discourse has a backup feature built in, but unless you go though the trouble of configuring S3 storage your backups are just stored on local disk. This is not ideal or reliable if your entire server is compromised! DigitalOcean snapshots can save the day by having a backup created outside of the droplet (but still within DigitalOcean)

Snapshots are a fast and easy way to recover a droplet to a previous state. They remove the requirement for disaster recovery planning, where you would typically need to ensure your server recovery processes reliably restore data and functionality.

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How to Backup your Discourse Droplet?

Install Discourse

Install Discourse on DigitalOcean. The process can be be simplified by using Digital Ocean's one-click install and deploy system.

Basic setup

  • Create Droplet
  • Choose Image -> One-click Apps
  • Choose "Discourse"
  • Choose Size
  • Choose your Data Center location
  • Select your SSH key and any additional options
  • Give it a hostname
  • Create!
  • Access droplet via SSH to enable Discourse
  • Browse to the IP of the Droplet to start Discourse installation
  • Configure DNS
  • Start your Community!

Activate Discourse in SnapShooter

After your Discourse droplet is setup is a perfect time to login to SnapShooter and activate backups on your Droplet.

  • Login to SnapShooter
  • Find your new Droplet
  • Choose "Activate"
  • Choose how often to backup e.g. Once a Day
  • Choose how many you want to keep e.g. 7
  • Choose the timezone of your droplet
  • Choose the time you want daily backups to happen
  • Click Start Backing up
  • Click Snapshot Now if you want us to backup right away
  • Sit back and relax: your Discourse community is safe