Discourse is a powerful tool that makes it easy to run and manage a member-only community forum. Patreon has an integration with Discourse that automatically adds/removes members based on their membership access.
How do I set up my Discourse account?
Go to Discourse.org and click on the blue Try it FREE link. Then, select a plan for your 14-day trial and set up your account by entering the following information
- Email address
- Subdomain or domain – If you don't self-host your own domain, select the box next to “I need a temporary domain” and enter the subdomain you’d like to use; If you host your own domain, you can use that as well, and it will be free
- Community name (you can change this later)
You’ll receive an email from Discourse asking you to confirm your email address. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your account.
After you confirm your email address, you’ll be taken to Discourse, where you’ll follow the steps below to set up your community. Follow the on-screen steps and select Next after you complete each step.
Items to complete:
- Choose a language
- Add a community name: You can always edit this in the future
- Add a description for your community: This is like your “elevator pitch” and will be the first thing that new arrivals to your community will read
- Set your access: You can choose whether your community is public or private. If you choose public, everyone can access your forum even if they are not logged in. If you choose Private, only logged-in users can find your forum. You can create private categories for your members. You can also enable the option to invite people to your community. Please note that if you do this, you will have to send the invites to each person on your end
- Contact information: This includes the email address for the person in charge of this community, a general contact web page (for example, your website or Patreon page), and the user from which automated messages are sent
- Organization information: If you have a company, please enter your company name, governing law, and city for disputes; If you don’t have a company, you can skip this step
- Theme: Select the color theme, logos, icons, homepage format, and emoji style you prefer for your community.
- Invite staff: If you have other individuals on your team who need to moderate the community, you can invite them during this time as well.
When you're done, you’ll be taken to a page that says “Your Discourse is Ready!” Select Done, then you’ll be taken to your Community page.
How to set up the Discourse integration with Patreon
Now that you’ve set up your community, you will need to connect it to Patreon.
- To start, select the burger menu in the top right corner, then select Admin > Plugins
- Scroll down, then select the settings icon next to “Discourse-Patreon” – Keep this tab open, since you will return to it in a few steps
- In a separate browser window, enter the following URL: http://patreon.com/portal/registration/register-clients
- Click the Create Client button and fill out the required fields
- Set App Name to Patreon Discourse Plugin – You’ll also enter your Redirect URI. To get your Redirect URI, go back to the browser window with Discourse open and copy your Discourse URL with subdomain (https://yoursubdomain.trydiscourse.com)
- Paste this URL into the Redirect URIs field, then add/auth/patreon/callback so that the entire redirect URI displays like this: https://yoursubdomain.trydiscourse.com/auth/patreon/callback
- Then click the Create Client button to find your App name and client ID, then select the down-arrow icon to open up a menu that displays all of your client info
- Now copy and paste your client info back into your Discourse plugin settings – You'll be switching back and forth between the browser windows with Discourse and Patreon open, so you may want to keep them side by side
- Copy and paste the following from the Patreon client page into the corresponding Discourse fields:
- Patreon Client ID
- Patreon Client Secret
- Patreon Creator Access Token
- Patreon Creator Refresh Token
- Select the green arrow next to each field to save
- Now, navigate to this URL: https://yoursubdomain.trydiscourse.com/admin/plugins/patreon, then select “Update Patreon Data and Sync Groups.” A pop-up will appear and confirm that new data has been downloaded
- Refresh the page and select OK
How do my members join Discourse?
To check how a member would join your Discourse forum, follow the steps below:
- Open an incognito tab, paste your Discourse community URL, and select the With Patreon button to log in using your Patreon credentials.
- Enter your login information and select Allow when you are taken to the OAuth window. If your member doesn't have a Discourse account, they will be asked to create one at this point.
- Your member will then be taken to your Discourse community homepage.