After nearly five years, The Taggart Institute is changing locations. We are departing Teachable as our course platform and Discord as our community gathering space. I've been contemplating these moves for a while, but recent events have convinced me that now is the right time.
I launched TTI's Discord and the Teachable instance at nearly the same time, after streaming on Twitch for a while. Folks kept asking if I had a Discord, and it seemed like a reasonable way to build a community of learners—the whole point of my Twitch experiment. Teachable followed shortly thereafter, having learned the platform through publishing my first course with TCM Academy. I felt there was a need for a place that offered foundational knowledge that benefited anyone exploring the world of computing technology. Teachable was by far the most accessible and affordable way to bring up such a school.
I'm grateful for what both Discord and Teachable have enabled TTI to become. But as these tools' strategy evolves, they keep evolving away from what's best for our students. This last year has demonstrated that what TTI deserves is better, freer, and more sustainable than what Teachable and Discord are becoming.
I'll explain.
Teachable
Teachable was always a matter of convenience. There are better, more featureful learning platforms out there, but they all either cost a great deal in hosting, or in time for management. I unfortunately had neither. Teachable served its purpose well: connecting learners to course material and handling payment processing.
Oh, and certificates. LinkedIn sure does love those certificates.
But every year, Teachable's rates have gone up, while its added features are...almost exclusively AI. You can imagine my feelings about that. TTI has made some hard decisions over the years to remain affordable and do right by our students. If Teachable were worth it, I'd figure out a way to make it work. That's not the situation. I am paying essentially for the privilege of avoiding payment processing. It's not like Teachable's UI is mind-blowing. Heck, we barely use any quizzing features in the platform because we don't believe in them!
I expect another price hike this year. I'm not waiting to find it. It's time to find another place to host the courses. I'll figure out payments and certificates in a way that makes sense.
Discord
I've kept an uneasy détente with Discord as they pushed Nitro harder, locked features behind boosts, and started in on ads. This age verification business though, combined with their upcoming IPO, is where I have to draw the line. Let's be clear: age verification doesn't protect kids; it creates a surveillance mechanism operated by companies and leveraged by governments. I get that the UK, Australia, and some of our most backward US states have passed age verification legislation. It may be a good business move to lean into it. That doesn't make it good for my students—even the ones under 18.
I've spent my adult life teaching. For most of that I have been teaching children. I am their fiercest advocate; I will take bullets for them. Building a surveillance state simply is not the way to protect them. And of course, This is wrong.
Friends, I am tired. I'm tired of constantly wondering when services I rely on will betray me. Tired of worrying whether my choice of platform is building a world contrary to my values.
We need to do better. So we're gonna do better.
Next Stop: Discourse
It's probably not a surprise after my ranking of Discord alternatives that I've chosen Discourseas our escape strategy. I'll be self-hosting, using all the tools I've built and learned since writing The Homelab Almanac. Discourse will serve as both community space and learning platform for TTI. This unification will allow us to grow beyond either Teachable or Discord. Our courses will be more social, our knowledge more searchable, and our freedom ensured.
This will be an adjustment from the real-time chat mode of Discord. But I firmly believe that the forum model has a lot to offer, even in 2026. Thoughtful, nuanced dialogue, easily searchable, with robust moderation and safety tools.
What this means in practice is that, once the migration is complete, taggartinstitute.org will be the destination for TTI's community.
Pricing Model
With this change, we're also going to modify the pricing structure for courses. Currently, TTI has a pay-what-you-wish model, in which $1, $5, $10, and $15 per course options are available—along with the free option.
Moving forward, all courses will simply be free to members of the TTI community. Instead, we will focus on a membership/subscription model to support operations. Paid membership is not mandatory, but I'm betting our community is invested in our future. But regardless, subscriptions will never gate our learning materials.
Well, except for books like The Homelab Almanac. I think it's fair to ask compensation for large works like that.
The hope for TTI has always been to have more community members build courses, like our "Oral History of Binary Exploitation", or "Detection Engineering with Sigma." In this model, the barrier to course creation for community members is much lower, and subscribing members support the work.
I'm not quite sure yet how we'll handle certificates. but we'll have them. Don't worry—your LinkedIn shares will be unaffected.
Schedule
The New TTI is available today in beta form. We would like your help working out the kinks. Discord plans on rolling out age verification in March. My intention is to be able to retire the Discord by that time. It's a very tight timeline, but I want there to be a safe haven for our community.
The Teachable courses will take longer to migrate. "The Learning Journey" and "Creating with Git" are available now as test courses to make sure we have the format dialed in. The Teachable site will be up until June, albeit under a different domain name. When we're ready to switch in March, the Teachable domain will become old.taggartinstitute.org. After that, we will be fully on Discourse. The old Discord will remain as a read-only archive, with links pointing to Discourse.
The Hard Thing and the Right Thing
They're so often the same, aren't they? I truly believe this is the right thing for our community. I also believe we can show the way for other groups facing the same dilemma. That being said, I understand that this is a massive change, and not everyone is interested in going along with it. I understand and respect that position. Our doors will always, always be open. There will certainly be discomfort in this transition, but ultimately I believe it positions us well for the future.
As always, the TTI community has my deepest gratitude. We have built something special over these last several years. It is time our platform lived up to our standards.