Discourse Segment CDP Plugin

Emits Discourse user and activity events to Segment CDP using the official analytics-ruby SDK.

Currently Supported Events

• identify — with flexible user ID strategy
• track("Signed Up") — on account creation
• track("Post Created")
• track("Post Liked")
• track("Topic Created")
• track("Topic Tag Created")
• page — on controller/page-level requests with friendly page names

Installation

Note: The following installation instructions are examples for a standard Discourse installation. Different hosting providers may have different installation methods. For detailed installation instructions, please refer to the official Discourse plugin installation guide.

In Segment, create a Ruby source (or use existing) and use the writeKey to configure this plugin in Discourse.

New Installation

If you've never used a Segment plugin before:

1. Add the plugin to your Discourse's app.yml:

   hooks:
     after_code:
       - exec:
           cd: $home/plugins
           cmd:
             - mkdir -p plugins
             - git clone https://github.com/islegendary/discourse-segment-CDP.git

2. Rebuild your Discourse container:

   cd /var/discourse
   ./launcher rebuild app

3. Go to Settings > Plugins > Segment CDP

4. Add your Segment writeKey and update your settings

5. Enable the plugin

Important: The plugin requires the analytics-ruby gem (the official Segment Ruby SDK). This should be automatically installed during the rebuild process in a standard Discourse installation. If you encounter any issues, you may need to manually add this gem to your Discourse's Gemfile.

Upgrading from discourse-segment-io-plugin

If you're currently using the old discourse-segment-io-plugin, first, follow the installation steps above, but don't enable the new plugin until you do the following:

1. Go to Settings > Plugins
2. Disable the old discourse-segment-io-plugin
3. In the new plugin, add your Segment writeKey and update your settings
4. Now, Enable the new Segment CDP plugin

Identity Strategy

You can choose how Segment identifies users via the segment_CDP_user_id_source site setting:

Option	Description
email	Uses user email as the userId
sso_external_id	Uses the user's external ID from SSO if present
use_anon	Uses a custom, deterministic, 36-character anonymousId
discourse_id	Uses the internal Discourse user ID (e.g. 123)

The anonymousId format is:

<discourse_id>-dc-<derived_string>

This is stable, unique per user, and does not require identifying information like email.

Page Tracking

The plugin now uses friendly page names for better readability in Segment. Examples include:

• "Latest Topics" instead of "list#latest"
• "Topic View" instead of "topics#show"
• "User Profile" instead of "users#show"
• "Admin Dashboard" instead of "admin#index"

All technical information (controller, action) is still preserved in the properties for debugging.

🧪 Debug Logging (Optional)

Enable segment_CDP_debug_enabled in site settings to log payloads to the Rails log. This is useful for inspecting or verifying the format of data being sent to Segment.

🔁 Backfilling Existing Users

Note: If your site previously used discourse_id, and you are switching to Indentity Strategy, Segment will treat these as new distinct profiles.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

This plugin is © 2025 Donnie W. It is free software, licensed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.

Compatibility: This component provides the same comprehensive tracking as the discourse-segment-theme-component but uses backend server mode tracking instead of frontend javascript tracking.