Hi team,
I’m running my own self-hosted Discourse instance, and I’m also active on several other Discourse communities. I’d like to request (or at least discuss) two related capabilities that currently feel hard to solve in a clean, official, and scalable way.
1) “Activity backup” across Discourse instances (cross-site mirroring to my own forum)
The goal
Whenever I create a new topic (and optionally replies) on another Discourse site, I want my own Discourse instance to automatically keep a copy (or a clearly attributed mirror) so I can:
maintain a personal archive of my participation across communities,
search and reference my past discussions in one place,
avoid losing history if posts/accounts disappear on other sites.
Current problem
In practice this is difficult to do reliably without admin-level control of the other forums, and without creating duplicated/spammy content. Even when some workarounds exist, they are usually fragile or not standardized between sites.
What I’m asking for
Is there any plan for an official, supported approach to “cross-instance activity backup”, such as:
a standardized way to export/sync a user’s own authored content to another Discourse instance,
optional mirroring of topics/replies with strong attribution and canonical links,
a permission model that respects source-site rules (e.g., only sync what I authored and what is publicly visible).
2) Unified multi-site subscription & reading experience (one UI for multiple Discourse forums)
The goal
I’d like a single interface where I can subscribe to multiple Discourse sites and view a unified stream of:
Latest / New / Unread
watched categories/tags across sites
notifications, mentions, bookmarks
ideally with per-site authentication, and the ability to open/reply/like in context
Current problem
Today, using multiple Discourse communities means juggling many tabs and accounts. Community-made solutions can sometimes aggregate content, but they tend to be fragile, hard to scale beyond a couple sites, and not something I can rely on long term.
What I’m asking for
Would Discourse consider an official “multi-instance reader” (web UI or app), or at least a supported framework/API pattern that enables this reliably?
Why this matters
It improves productivity for users active across many Discourse communities.
It enables personal knowledge management and long-term archiving of one’s own contributions.
An official approach could reduce fragmentation and avoid brittle workarounds.
If there are existing discussions or roadmap items related to either “cross-instance activity backup” or “multi-site unified reader,” I’d love pointers. I’d also be happy to help clarify requirements, propose an MVP, or test solutions.
Thanks!
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