Create a redirect url for the Discord invite link

[tim-schilling]

I think there's benefit in creating a djangoproject.com/discord or djangoproject.com/chat to redirect to ​https://discord.gg/xcRH6mN4fa.

That code is obfuscated and is weird for other communities/people to share. When individuals share links to the Django discord, it's not possible to inspect that it's actually the correct server. I think sharing a djangoproject.com link, even if it redirects, is more trustworthy.

There's also the scenario in which something happens Discord's end and the code were invalidated, we'd have a number of places to change. It might be worth to start that process sooner rather than later.

[tim-schilling]

I think this is in the wrong spot.

[tim-schilling]

Alright, maybe this is the right spot (Django ticket).

[tim-schilling]

Pending forum discussion first.

[bmispelon]

The forum post got 3 positive votes by my count, so I think it's reasonable to move forward with this.

I'm going to go with chat.djangoproject.com for now, we can always change or add another option later down the line if needed.

There's a few moving parts to make it happen in our DNS configuration, but I'm working on it and I'll report here once things are working.

[pbratkowski]

If it's not too late, I would suggest using the explicit discord.djangoproject.com rather than chat.

Maybe one day chat will move to Matrix, or there will be an equally large alternative, so using the generic chat subdomain may be less ideal, but NBD.

[tim-schilling]

Using a generic term allows us to change this one spot for the preferred async chat platform. I think there's a benefit to that.

[pbratkowski]

OTOH, if there ever are two competing platforms which are in use, then the generic chat would only work for one.

But as I've said, NBD either way as far as I'm concerned. Just food for thought :)

[bmispelon]

It took a few tries but I think I got it to work: https://chat.djangoproject.com should now be redirecting correctly.

I went for chat rather than discord for now, since it matched what we're doing now with forum. if there's consensus to change it (or have both) it should be possible.

I believe the next step is now to file the PRs to replace the link in the various templates (also for code.djangoproject.com). I sugges using git grep discord.gg to find out which files need changes.

[bmispelon]

For reference, I've opened a ticket (with PR) to change the links inside django/django (mosty in the docs): https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/36125

I'll start working on PRs for djangoproject.com and code.djangoproject.com