Forem is open source software for building communities. It is the platform that powers dev.to, and allows members to share posts, create classified listings, send direct messages, listen to podcasts, and much more.

You can start building your community and deploy Forem to Render with the following components:

• A Rails web service that runs the main app.
• A Sidekiq worker that handles background jobs.
• An Elasticsearch instance for in-app searching.
• A Redis instance to cache data.
• A Render PostgreSQL managed database as the primary database.

See the guide at https://render.com/docs/deploy-forem.

Forem requires SendGrid for sending transactional emails to setup the admin account through the browser. See the SendGrid docs for help creating an SMTP Relay API key.

Use the button below to deploy Forem on Render.

1. Set APP_DOMAIN in the rails environment group.

   If you're using a custom domain, you'll need to configure your DNS. Otherwise, wait for the Forem web service to be created and copy its .onrender domain.

2. Configure SendGrid for account email confirmation.

   Set SENDGRID_API_KEY to your SendGrid SMTP Relay API key in the rails environment group. Add the email you configured with SendGrid under DEFAULT_EMAIL in the rails environment group

If you need help, get in touch at community.render.com or [email protected].