Discourse is the customizable, scalable community platform powering more than 22,000 communities that create knowledge through conversation. Discourse has been open-source since day one. It combines long-form discussions with real-time chat. It is very customizable and extensible. Complete data ownership is paramount, whether you host your own instance or use paid Discourse hosting.

This talk will briefly outline the main features of Discourse. The software has evolved considerably since its initial release in 2013. It supports quick chats, multilingual translations, integrations with other open-source software, advanced spam handing, AI integrations, and more. We will conclude the talk by running a demo of a self-hosted installation of Discourse on a low-cost server using out-of-the-box functionality.