Known issues in self hosting forem

I have mentioned a few of these issues in one of my posts, but I would like to create a separate post so that other Forem self hosters can confirm things and proceed. Also, if we found any new issue or resolve any problems, we can update those here.

I also created a separate production server in Heroku, which will not be touched for any other purposes except for this thread. You can view all the issue in that server.

Navigation Links

Click here to redirect to the error page. In the footer and in the left side panel, you can only see 2 options to navigate.

Issue

The navigations links are not generated in Heroku install and Dokku installations; we can only see the Home and the Sign-in/Signup navigation links.

Solution

Still on its way

Imgproxy

Click here to redirect to the error page. The site was configured with imgproxy, and the link you are looking at is the imgproxy generate URL of s3 stored images.

Issue

imgproxy is not an option for Heroku or Dokku based environments because the imgproxy generates a URL pointing at the local storage even if we use the ENV variables IMGPROXY_USE_S3 and its subordinates. I was hoping for a better version of this. When s3 is acting as the primary storage, imgproxy should generate relevant URLs.

Solution

Presently this resizing issue can be taken care of by adding Clodinary API keys and enabling Immage addon in Cloudinary.

But expecting imgproxy support

Sending Emails

This Forem instance is configured with my Sendgrid SMTP details, but you cannot register using email or the admin cannot sent invitation.

Issue

Even with the latest SMTP variable addition within the admin panel didn't solve the issue of delivering mails.

Solution

By look at the recent PR's there might be a lot of work going on this. So, it's coming soon.

Resolved

Welcome Thread in Admin

You should be an admin to reproduce this.

Issue

I could not create a new welcome thread within the admin panel, even if I'm the super_admin. It even does not redirect to the 404 pages; it shows me the crashed server screen, even though the server was live.

Solution

This was a know issue by the team, but for now, you can create an article and in tags add:welcome tag. The latest post of welcome tag will act like the welcome thread.

Know Issue Five: In build Process

You should use Dokku or Heroku and look at the build process

Issue

While spectating the logs in the build process, I always encounter this particular thing, I'm not sure what it is though!

 yarn run v1.22.5
       $ postcss public/assets/*.css -d public/assets 2> postcss_error.log
       error Command failed with exit code 1.
       info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
       Asset precompilation completed (668.35s)
       Cleaning assets
       Running: rake assets:clean
-----> Detecting rails configuration

solution

I need more information about this, I'm not sure what it is though.

Chat

You should be an user an follower, in order to test this, you can join my Forem using github/twitter and ping me.

Issue

When you try to send message, even the sender was not able to know whether the message was delivered or not. I'm not talking about notification issue with the delivery person.

To make it clear, once you send a message, within our chat, we will have a preview that message was sent or not. But until I reload my chat page, I cannot see my chat preview.

Solution

Forem cloud has no such issues, so I assume that this was a situational issue. But not sure what it is and to reproduce it just install Forem in Dokku or Heroku

Resolved