Discourse Migration Quote

Ready to migrate to Discourse but don't have the time to figure it out? Literate Computing is the answer you've been looking for. Complete the quote form below and we'll get you using Discourse in no time.

Get Your Discourse Platform Migration Quote

Complete the form below for a quote on migrating to Discourse

  • Since Fall of 2016, I have helped dozens of communities migrate to Discourse from inferior forums (since my entire living comes from Discourse, I believe that all other forums are inferior!).

    Can you migrate my forum?

    If you can get a dump of your forum’s database and an archive of the uploaded files, the answer is almost certainly “yes.” There is list of importers that are available here on Github. If you do not see yours listed there, a new one will have to be written. I typically charge $1000-2500 to write a new importer for a forum of 100K posts. If an importer already exists for your legacy forum, I typically charge $500-2000 to import to Discourse for a small to moderate-sized forum. Some variables include how much data you have, how many times I need to run the importer to resolve problems that emerge, and how critical down time is.

    That sounds expensive! Can I do it myself or get it for free?

    Sure! Lots of people do. Search on meta for “#howto forumName" or see this guide. If you are not a do-it-yourselfer, pay for a year of Business hosting from Discourse.org ($3600 at time of this writing) and they will do it for you in addition to hosting your site for a year! If you are getting hosting from them, you should definitely check with them first to see if they will cover your migration.

    Another solution is to use crowdfunding to have your community pay for the move. It worked for BlenderArtists.

  • Please provide an approximate budget and time frame.
  • Please share your forum URL
    What forum are you running currently? See github for a list of existing importerse.
    Would you like to import passwords? It is not always possible. See this post for more information.
    Discourse supports only category/subcategory. If your forum has more than that you can either change them before you supply me with the database, or have me remap them, perhaps changing some categories to tags. Is this something you need?
    If you are not sure, check all that you are considering
    Does your current forum have some kind of person to person(s) messages that you would like to retain?
    Are 301 redirects important? What URLs do you need to redirect
  • Are there issues that might make the migration more complicated? Some complications include:
    • Migrated from another forum previously
    • Plugins that change how text or attachments are stored or add/modify the forum's features
    • specific formatting needs, i.e., topics with a table of contents, colors, fonts
    Can you remember how you found your way here?
  • For a full estimate, we need a copy of your database and your attachments. You can use this link to get it to our engineers.