Discourse is a popular and powerful open source discussion forum software.
Memberful integrates directly with Discourse so you can manage access to a members-only discussion forum through your memberships. This integration uses groups and single sign-on settings in Discourse to control who can view and participate in your community.In this help article, we’ll show you how to create Discourse groups, connect your forum to Memberful, map plans to groups, protect categories, and manage important Discourse settings.
When Memberful connects to Discourse, it updates some of your default Discourse settings. Don’t reset the DiscourseConnect settings or the integration will stop working.
Choose which membership plans should be linked to which Discourse groups.
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Save your changes
Click Update settings.
These settings do not apply to members who register for free.Once setup is complete, active members are added automatically to their assigned Discourse group after they sign in through Memberful.
If a member’s subscription expires, they are removed from the associated Discourse group, even if they still have a Discourse account.
Default Discourse categories such as Meta do not have security settings. If you want a members-only forum, do not use the default categories for protected content.
The Uncategorized category does not include a Security tab. To prevent posting there, go to Admin → Settings → Posting and disable posting to Uncategorized.
Memberful does not allow non-admin Memberful users to remain Discourse admins. This protects your Discourse admin access because Memberful does not verify email ownership for that role.To set up Discourse admins correctly, create them as Memberful staff. Go to Settings → Staff in the Memberful dashboard.
Memberful uses the member login page for single sign-on because most Discourse users are members. If you want to access your Discourse forum as an admin, sign in to the Memberful dashboard first.
If you make a paying member a Discourse admin, Memberful removes the admin flag the next time that member syncs. Memberful does not remove the moderator flag, so paying members can still be Discourse moderators.
When single sign-on is enabled, Discourse shows a login button but not a signup button.To add a signup link to your forum, create a Memberful plan, copy the plan purchase link, and add that link to your website or forum. You can also customize your Discourse header to include the link.
When you disable the Discourse integration, Memberful attempts to disable Memberful single sign-on on your forum. After the integration is disabled successfully, you and your members can sign in to the forum normally again.If you cannot sign in to your forum after disabling the integration, use this URL to access the admin login and fix your Discourse settings:
