Discourse Forum via Azure IaaS
I realized the need for a dedicated space to exchange ideas and discuss specific mappings or overlays of the WTF. Therefore, I integrated clickable URL icons for each description item, linking directly to a new forum subdomain at forum.wtf-model.com.
To save setup time, I used the pre-built Bitnami Discourse image from the Azure marketplace. This allowed me to bypass a lot of manual Linux setup, and configured everything for me down to the Postgres Database that runs alongside a shared B2s instance. Performance-wise, this setup handles a few simultaneous users well, which is sufficient for now. While the pre-packaged image has some quirks, Bitnami’s experience in providing these for multiple cloud providers gave me confidence and actually was straightforward by following their tutorial and documentation.
I then coded up a short C# .NET8 Console App to parse my large .json file containing all the WTF-Model description entries. The app executes the creation of a predefined structure to generate new posts via the Discourse API, along with an added first-reply that i reserved on purpose for further notices on an entry. The App also merges an entries imagery via System.Drawing into one single composite image that goes alongside all the info and performs additional tasks based on each entry, such as assigning a Maturity Rating or adding extra links.
Posting all entries through the API took some time due to frequent Rate Limits and enforced timeouts. I couldn’t disable these as I couldn’t locate them in either the PostgresDB or the Ruby Files (my Ruby skills are essentially zero and regarding PSQL I’m no hot-shot eiter).
For programmatic purposes, I also had to delve into the way Discourse names uploaded images: After long research i figured that it uses SHA-1 instead of SHA-256. This took me some time and was a bit nerve-wracking.
After about 30 minutes, all entries were successfully uploaded, and I think the final result looks decent. While the app itself isn’t yet publicly released, these entries are accessible, providing a preview of what’s to come:
And here’s a second example from the high-level Political category:
All descriptive content entries, both free and paid versions, are now accessible. Registration for the WTF-Forum is set up with OAuth 2.0 (e.g. SSO), for Microsoft and Google, and it’s free for anyone interested in discussing specific entries.
