Hello there -
We would like to change our Discourse site URL from community.xmtp.org to improve.xmtp.org
If I create the needed DNS record to provide improve.xmtp.org, I believe there are some steps to make this happen on the Discourse site as well, is that correct?
Thank you so much for all you do!
J-Ha
@pfaffman any thoughts on this question? Thank you so much!
Sorry I missed this.
Of you need my help, set up the dns and let me know and I’ll do it in a day or two.
No worries at all @pfaffman - thank you for this guidance!
I will post here and tag you after I’ve set up the DNS.
Dear @pfaffman - hope you are well!
I’ve set up the A record for improve in Cloudflare:
And certainly, I’ve kept the original A record for community.
Will there be any downtime for this?
I ask because we have a window during which we need the forum to be up:
Thu Dec. 11, 12 noon Pacific to Fri Dec 12, 12 noon Pacific.
And if there is any doubt, it is totally OK if we hold off on doing this until after Fri, Dec 12, 12 noon Pacific.
Thank you!
J-Ha
Hi there @pfaffman - just checking in on this request - thank you!
We can now do this at any time because the “no downtime please” window has passed. 
Please let me know if you need any further info!
With aloha,
J-Ha
Hey. I’ve been busy this week. Probably get this done this weekend.
Hello! Oh great — thank you so much — and no rush! Next week some time is great!
You’re all set. Let me know if you have any trouble.
Ah fantastic, @pfaffman - thank you!
I am seeing the forum at improve.xmtp.org.
community.xmtp.org is redirecting to improve.xmtp.org. I am assuming that you proactively set this up for us?
At some point, we will need community.xmtp.org to host a different site. Because of this, I am wondering if I should set up the redirect in our Cloudflare instead? This way I won’t need to ask you to do it later.
Also, the site is displaying this message: Outgoing email has been disabled for non-staff users.
Do you think it is safe for me to turn email on for non-staff users now? Or is this showing up because something in our email setup isn’t working? How can I help fix this?
Thank you so much for everything!
J-Ha
Yes! I figured you didn’t want people to get a bunch of certificate errors.
Makes sense.
You get cloudflare to do it and tell me when it’s done and I’ll remove community.xmtp.org from the yml file and rebuild.
Oh. Sorry. That happens by default when you restore a database and I forgot.
Yes.
Thank you very much for the confirmations @pfaffman!
I added a bulk redirect in Cloudflare to send https://community.xmtp.org/\* to https://improve.xmtp.org/$1.
Does this look correct to you?
If you turn off the Discourse-level redirect, will this Cloudflare redirect take over?
Not sure if this is relevant, but just wanted to mention that both my A records for community and improve are DNS only and not proxied. Does that impact the ability of my Cloudflare bulk redirect to work once your redirect is removed?
To be super explicit, ChatGPT told me to run this to see if my Cloudflare redirect is working and based on the reply, it said it isn’t working.
jha@Jennifers-MacBook-Pro docs-xmtp-org % curl -I https://community.xmtp.orgHTTP/2 301server: nginxdate: Tue, 16 Dec 2025 02:00:55 GMTcontent-type: text/htmlcontent-length: 162location: https://improve.xmtp.org/strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
But to me it seems like it wouldn’t work YET b/c the Discourse redirect is still there?
Thank you again!
I added a bulk redirect in Cloudflare to send [https://community.xmtp.org/\](https://community.xmtp.org/\)* to https://improve.xmtp.org/$1.
Does this look correct to you?
Yes.
Not sure if this is relevant, but just wanted to mention that both my A records for community and improve are DNS only and not proxied. Does that impact the ability of my Cloudflare bulk redirect to work once your redirect is removed?
If cloudflare isn’t proxying then it’s not doing anything. You need to make the community A record proxied and then cloudflare will be doing the work.
Amazing!
Thank you for the confirmations – I appreciate your expertise @pfaffman !
I turned on proxying for community and got this back, so the Cloudflare redirect is now in effect, as you said it would be:
jha@Jennifers-MacBook-Pro xmtp-android % curl -I https://community.xmtp.org
HTTP/2 301
date: Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:18:40 GMT
content-type: text/html
location: https://improve.xmtp.org/
server: cloudflare
nel: {“report_to”:“cf-nel”,“success_fraction”:0.0,“max_age”:604800}
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
report-to: {“group”:“cf-nel”,“max_age”:604800,“endpoints”:[{“url”:“https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=cxk6F8RAqNxXlnXq0aaGTVd%2B83DqQzXWwpj6nav0AvKgOQQwWJ9Ssc5SyOYf9s8XwIZh5z5LV%2FN4SkApJLSiNU%2FXl6uK%2FWAWADdY5SR%2FVljzPxjTtzgwu53EZc%2FPLw%3D%3D”}]}
cf-ray: 9af814be9898720c-SJC
alt-svc: h3=“:443”; ma=86400
May I ask you one last question, please?
These two Cloudflare records have an alert:
Ă‚The alert says:
I was under the impression that improve must be DNS only in order for the Discourse settings you maintain to work – is that correct or is ChatGPT just telling me stories?
Or should I turn on proxying for improve?
Thank you again!
It needed to be DNS-only to get a certificate issued. If you want to switch it to the orange cloud you can, though I generally don’t recommend it. Cloudflare often decides to cache things it shouldn’t and/or compress things in ways that break things. It also sometimes interferes with my dashboard being able to retrieve version info and requires me to configure my dashboard to know your IP address so that it can connect to the server by IP rather than the hostname.
Thank you again and again @pfaffman - I only want to do things that you recommend! LOL So this means that I should leave these items as DNS only. Perfect!
