# How-to guides Manage the operational lifecycle of your Discourse deployment, from initial provisioning and configurations to ongoing maintenance and contribution workflows. ## Initial setup A working Discourse deployment begins with establishing an initial set of configurations to match your use case and needs. * [Configure the hostname](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/configure-hostname/index.html.md) * [Configure the container](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/configure-container/index.html.md) ## Basic operations Your base deployment might involve additional configurations and operations related to external services for storage, email delivery, or authentication. * [Access the Rails Console](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/access--the-rails-console/index.html.md) * [Configure S3](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/configure-s3/index.html.md) * [Configure SMTP](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/configure-smtp/index.html.md) * [Configure SAML](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/configure-saml/index.html.md) ## Maintenance and development As your deployment ages, preserving data integrity across upgrades requires a reliable backup and restore strategy. You may even have feedback or ideas for future features to the charm; contributors working on the charm itself should familiarize themselves with the development workflow. * [Backup and restore](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/backup-and-restore/index.html.md) * [Upgrade](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/upgrade/index.html.md) * [Contribute](https://canonical.com/juju/docs/discourse-k8s-charm/latest/how-to/contribute/index.html.md)