Signing members in to your Discourse forum

Discourse sign-in is in beta. If you want to try it on your site, email help@magicpages.co and we'll switch it on for you.

If you run a Discourse forum next to your Ghost site, your members can sign in to it with the account they already have on your site. Their tier decides which forum groups they're in, so you can keep categories for paying members.

It's included in every plan at no extra cost, and there's nothing to install.

What your members see

When a member clicks Log in on your forum, they land on a short sign-in page on your own domain, in your site's accent colour. It says "Sign in to the forum" with your site's name underneath.

• A member who's already signed in to your site sees "Signing you in…" and is back on the forum a moment later.
• A member who isn't signed in enters their email, then the code or the link Ghost sends them, and continues to the forum.
• Someone who isn't a member yet gets a Sign up link to your site's signup, as long as your site lets people sign up.

The first time someone signs in, Discourse creates their forum account. If they already had one with the same email address, Discourse links it, so their old posts stay theirs.

Their name and email come from your site and stay in step with it. When a member changes their email in Ghost, the forum picks it up, and they can't change it on the forum.

What it keeps up to date

Every paid tier becomes a group in Discourse. A member joins the groups of their tiers when they sign in, and when they upgrade, downgrade or cancel, the forum catches up within a few minutes. More on that in how tier groups work.

When you delete a member in Ghost, you decide what happens to their forum account: suspend it, anonymize it, delete it, or leave it alone. Here's what each choice does.

What you need

• Your own Discourse forum, either self-hosted or hosted by Discourse on their Pro plan or above. Their cheaper plans don't allow sign-in through another site. We connect the forum; we don't host it.
• An admin account on the forum, to create an API key and change a few settings.
• Members turned on in Ghost, since members are who signs in.

You don't hand over a Ghost API key, and there are no webhooks to set up.

Before you switch it on

Once it's on, everyone signs in to the forum through your site, you included. Anyone with a forum account but no membership on your site can only get back in by signing up on your site with the same email address.

So check that the email of your own Discourse admin account belongs to a member on your site. If it doesn't, add yourself in Ghost under Members.

Where to find it

Log in to your Ghost admin at yourdomain.com/ghost and open the Customer portal link in the left sidebar. Discourse sits in the top menu.

[Screenshot: the Discourse tab before a forum is connected, "Give your members a forum"]

The setup is in Connecting your Discourse forum.