The ‘Land on Group Messages Component’ is a deprecated theme component for Discourse that redirects users to a group’s messages page (e.g., /g/group-slug/messages) instead of the members page when clicking on a group link — but only if the user is a member and group messages exist. It was designed to simplify access to private group communications without needing separate categories. The component, created by nathank following support from @Johani, has no settings and is installed via GitHub: github.com/nathan-nz/discourse-group-messages-land. It was later updated to fix browser console warnings post 2, but a bug emerged affecting the /g (All Groups) page due to a core Discourse commit post 3. The component was temporarily patched to disable functionality on that page. nathank also sought help to add compatibility with the Discourse Sidebar, aiming to redirect sidebar group message links from /u/username/messages/group/group-slug to /g/group-slug/messages. Ultimately, nathank concluded the component is no longer useful or functional and marked it as deprecated.
This Theme Component redirects links to Groups so that they land on the Group Messages rather than on the Group Members.
The use-case for this is when your Forum makes extensive use of Groups, but you don’t want to set up an individual Category for private communications for each one.
The /g/group-slug/messages page can function as a topic list for these Groups without any further admin input. Unfortunately, these pages are somewhat buried, and several clicks are required to reach them.
This Component makes the Group Messages page the default landing page whenever a Group is clicked upon. This makes finding and using Group Messages (especially older ones) much more intuitive for users. It only does this when
Group messages exist for the group and
The user is a member of the group
This Component was made to formalise the amazing support of @Johani as a result of this conversation:
There are no settings. Simply install and activate it.