This instance of Discourse is currently running on Nginx 1.5.0 (dev) with Phusion Passenger 4.0.4.
Discourse itself is a Ruby application; Passenger is the application server for Ruby. Using Passenger lets me stick with Nginx for the heavy lifting. It also uses PostgreSQL for the back-end database, and Redis for caching and other stuff.
The pages you’re served are almost all generated via client-side javascript (check the page source!).
It’s definitely different from a traditional phpbb forum application.
And NOW we’re using Nginx 1.5.1 and Phusion Passenger 4.0.5. We’re also using Ruby 2.0.0-p195.
Feeling justified in splurging a bit when I was building this web server last year. Got PLENTY of headroom available—the thing that’s holding me back more than anything else is Comcast’s bandwidth. Wish they had more affordable business class plans that I could upgrade to. Don’t feel like paying another $40 a month just to get more upstream bandwidth.
For hardware, BTW, the CoG web server (which this is running on) is:
An Intel Core i7-2600S CPU @ 2.80GHz (32nm Sandy Bridge, low-power variant)
An Intel BOXDH67CLB3 LGA2011 motherboard
16GB PC3-10666 DDR3 (1333MHz) RAM
One Corsair 90GB Force GT SATA III SSD
Cheap, and frankly, oversized even for what I’m doing (and a similar amount of hardware would cost $200 or more per month if I was paying for dedicated hosting).
Very nice, I’ve been looking forward to the final parts of the webserver series for a while now. Very much interested in getting ruby (+postgres) up and running, too.
I like that the number of clicks per link is displayed.
Re: Dedicated Server: Prices are good and support is pretty quick too, me and some friends have a dedicated server there (not trying to spam here, no affiliation etc.)
Aaand a quick bug report: While trying to log in through the login link in the thread I get an “unknown error” (correct credentials). Using the login-link in the forum header worked. Maybe it was a temporary thing. I also got varnish errors reloading the thread.
Just FYI in case anyone is interested, we jettisoned Passenger some time ago. Discourse is now a containerized Docker application.
Our web stack is HAProxy (for SSL/TLS termination) -> Varnish (cache layer) -> Nginx 1.9.1 -> Discourse Docker (which contains Nginx and Unicorn and all the Ruby bullshit). Discourse also uses postgresql and redis.
I thought it was running on sunshine and dreams!! WEEP!! RUIN MY DREAMS MR. SMILING DINOSAUR WHO I USE TO KNOW AS KEEP AND HUMP THEIR LEG AS WELL, JACK THE INVISIBLE YORKIE!! ~flees into the shoe section`
I don’t know if the latest upgrade has anything to do with what I’m seeing…
Since I got back, these forums have been really, really slow to load. Looking at my network traffic, my browser is pulling down some insane amount of data from the server. On a mobile device (3G connection), it’s so slow as to be useless.
The UPS for the two web servers died yesterday out of the blue. No idea why. Tried replacing the battery, but it didn’t help—something in the actual UPS itself is broke. Still works in bypass, so I’ve got a new one ordered and the web servers are running without battery backup.
There’ll be some more downtime tomorrow when the new UPS shows up and I power the servers down to plug it in.