Discourse Locations

Discourse Locations adds structured and geocoded locations to topics and users, with map-based discovery throughout Discourse.

Functionality

• Adds structured locations to topics, including optional or required geocoding.
• Enables locations per category and supports category and site-wide topic map views.
• Provides configurable map markers, clustering, labels, bounds, default centres, and tile providers.
• Lets users save a voluntary profile location and optionally show it on posts, profiles, user cards, and the users directory map.
• Supports configurable location formats, country flags, profile maps, and defaulting a new topic to the current user's location.
• Includes local name and username search on the users map, deterministic recent-activity ordering, and privacy-aware location payloads.
• Supports multiple geocoding providers while retaining textual locations when geocoding is not required.

Pro extension

Discourse Locations Pro Extension is an optional private extension available to GitHub Sponsors as a thank-you for supporting ongoing development. Individual and independent-community sponsors receive access from the $7/month Bronze tier; businesses and institutions must sponsor at the $40/month Silver tier or above.

Sponsor on GitHub to get Locations Pro

Once you have access, install the Pro extension alongside this base plugin to enable:

• Automated user-location estimation from IP data, with configurable precision and privacy safeguards.
• Nearby-topic discovery based on the signed-in user's saved location.
• Optional location-aware tools for discourse-chatbot.
• Permission-aware group and result-limit filters on the users map.
• An interactive WebGL globe alternative to the base Leaflet users map.
• An optional idle globe screen saver that reuses the interactive renderer.

The Pro extension has its own master setting and feature settings. Disabling or removing it leaves this base plugin's appearance and functionality unchanged.

Installation

Add the public plugin to your Discourse container's plugin clone section:

git clone https://github.com/merefield/discourse-locations.git

See How to install plugins in Discourse for the standard installation process.

Privacy and storage

Complete editable locations are stored in model custom fields. The locations_user and locations_topic tables contain spatial projections used for map membership, proximity, distance, and ordering.

Raw location custom fields are not globally public. The plugin exposes normalized data only through purpose-specific serializers and applies Discourse profile, group, and directory visibility rules to map results.

See Location data ownership for the storage contract and reconciliation task.

Extension API

Extension API version 1 is the baseline contract used by the base and Pro pairing. Extensions can verify compatibility with Locations::EXTENSION_API_VERSION after the base plugin initializes.

• Server-side extensions should use Locations::UserLocationStore and Locations::TopicLocationStore instead of reading location custom fields directly.
• Client-side extensions can read the normalized current-user location from currentUser.geo_location.
• Users-map extensions can use the locations-users-map-controls and locations-users-map-surface outlets and the locations_users_map_query_options server modifier.

Documentation and support

• Administration settings
• Locations in topics
• Locations in categories
• Community discussion
• Report a bug