Intella Parts · Private Community Forum

Discourse Forum — Project Plan & 2-Week Roadmap

A private, invite-only Q&A community at forums.intellaparts.com where users post questions and help each other across forklift brands and business topics.

Platform: Discourse Access: Private / invite-only Prepared 18 Jun 2026 Timeline: 2 weeks

01What we're building

An open-source Discourse forum — the same platform used by major software and product communities. Users post how-to questions, replies, and discussion across dedicated brand and business categories. The site is fully private: visitors must log in to see anything, and it will not be indexed by Google.

Q&A & discussion
Threaded topics, replies, search, solved-answer marking, likes.
Invite-only access
Admins invite users by email; no open public sign-up.
User & admin management
Built-in admin to invite, manage, and moderate users.
Branded look
Logo, colors, category artwork from your graphics designer.

02Hosting recommendation

Discourse's own managed hosting is the expensive route. The cost savings come from self-hosting on a small cloud server — not from cheap shared hosting (which can't run Discourse). Here's the comparison:

OptionCostTrade-off
DigitalOcean VPS (self-host)
Official Docker install		 $24/mo
4GB server		 Full control, lowest cost. We manage setup, updates & backups. Recommended
Communiteq
Managed Discourse host		 ~$20–30/mo Fully managed updates, hands-off. Less control. Good alt
Official Discourse hosting $100+/mo Zero ops but 4×+ the cost for a private forum. Overkill

Plus a transactional email service for invites & notifications (Postmark / Amazon SES / Mailgun — free to ~$15/mo). Required for the system to send invitation emails.

03Category framework

All requested topics map to forum categories. Suggested grouping — brands under a parent "Forklift Brands", with Business Management as a standalone category:

Forklift Brands
CaterpillarClarkCrownDoosan HysterKomatsuRaymondTCM / UniCarriers ToyotaYale Material HandlingAerial Brands
General
Business Management

Flat (no parent grouping) is also available if you prefer all 12 at the top level.

04Privacy & admin

No Google indexing
  • Site set to login-required — nothing is visible without an account.
  • noindex headers as backup.
  • Search engines are fully blocked.
User administration
  • Invite users individually or in bulk (CSV).
  • Manage, suspend, promote & moderate users.
  • Email invites & notifications via connected mail service.
On reusing Junaid's admin (ai.intellaparts.com): Discourse ships with its own complete, self-contained user & admin system. Sharing one login across both sites means building single sign-on (SSO) integration, which on its own is likely more than the 5-hour threshold.
Recommendation: keep them separate unless a single cross-site login is a hard requirement. We'll confirm once we can review Junaid's setup.

05Two-week roadmap

Assuming the DigitalOcean self-host path is approved. Week 1 stands up a working private forum; Week 2 brands it, loads content structure, and hands off.

WEEK 1 Stand up the forum

Day 1–2

Decisions & accounts

Confirm hosting, DNS access for forums.intellaparts.com, and email provider. Provision the server & domain. → Environment ready

Day 2–3

Install Discourse

Official Docker install, SSL certificate, connect transactional email. → Forum live on the domain

Day 3–4

Lock it down & create categories

Set login-required + no-indexing, create all 12 categories with descriptions. → Private forum with full category framework

Day 5

Admin & invites

Configure invite-only mode, test invitation emails, set up admin accounts. → Working invite flow demo

Day 4–5

Integration with existing Intella system (SSO)

Wire Discourse into the existing intella-ingestion stack (ai.intellaparts.com): add a forum flag to the existing per-product access model, build a DiscourseConnect SSO endpoint on the current FastAPI auth service, and run Discourse as a sibling container behind the same Caddy proxy. Result: one shared login, user database, invite & email system across both sites. → Unified auth + single admin across both sites

WEEK 2 Brand, polish & hand off

Day 6–8

Branding & graphics

Apply logo, favicon, colors, and category artwork from your designer. Tune theme for an attractive UI. → Branded look

Day 9

Junaid admin review

Review ai.intellaparts.com admin; confirm shared-vs-separate decision (within the 5-hr cap). → Written recommendation

Day 10–11

Seed content & settings

Welcome topic, category guidelines, notifications, backups, moderation rules. → Launch-ready forum

Day 12–14

Invite first users & handoff

Send first wave of invites, admin walkthrough, short how-to guide for your team. → Live & handed off

06What we need from you to start

1. Hosting approval — DigitalOcean self-host (recommended) or Communiteq managed?
2. DNS access — where intellaparts.com domain is managed, so we can point forums.intellaparts.com.
3. Email provider — existing Postmark/SES/Mailgun, or we recommend & set one up.
4. Graphics — connect us with your designer for logo, favicon & category art.