Quentin_B is seeking feedback on the best default view for his community’s homepage. User interviews suggested the categories/latest topics split view, but Quentin_B found limitations, such as the impression of low activity due to only one user’s portrait being displayed. The latest post view is also problematic, with users finding it “messy” and difficult to use Quentin_B.
awesomerobot asked for more specific feedback, and Quentin_B provided user comments. rishabh suggested displaying multiple avatars in the theme and offered inspiration from other layouts, including Featured Topics + Categories. Quentin_B expressed interest in custom development but finds handlebar templating challenging.
matenauta advised that the key to a successful homepage is to clearly explain the community’s purpose, how to contribute, and how to search, possibly through a video tutorial. They emphasized that Discourse is a forum, not a social media platform, and that understanding this concept is crucial for user engagement.
Long story short, I’m struggling to choose the best default view to kickstart my community. I’m not worried about the volume of registrations, but I’m facing difficulties to organize the homepage of my instance.
User interviews basically told me that the categories / latest topics split views was the best, however I find there’s some awful limitations on it. I managed to remove the post count but having only the latest poster’s portrait on the right gives the impression that there’s basically only one person active on the forum (as I’m answering every post).
Latest post view is useful to provide the feeling of “populated forum” on the early life of the forum, but I have been told by my users it’s difficult to read and use.
Last option, which IMHO is my best bet, is getting the “Box categories” on top of the page, then the latest topics displayed below. However, I will need some custom devs for this.
Here’s my question: from your experience, have you, despite user feedbacks and only looking at data, noticed a layout that performed better than the others?
The main feedback was “Messy” and “I don’t know where I’m supposed to look at”.
I will be clear: I’m not necessarily aligned with these comments, however it makes me believe there is a gap between the Categories + latest topics display and the Topics only display that the Box categories doesn’t fill.
I’m asking for your feedback because I don’t have any analytics installed on my forum (for GDPR reasons at the moment) to confirm or infirm this theory
Without custom devs, you can still get a lot done with our official theme-components. For example, Homepage Feature could be a nice addition to any existing layout.
Finally, there is the category boxes with topics option in the wizard:
Thank you. I already managed to add some custom components and theming, I want to go further but sadly handlebar templating is a bit confusing for a noob like me
I also followed your recommendation and updated to Categories box
When people know what a community is (plus internet, forums, e-mails, civilizated debates, discuss, dialectic) it’s so different when people just don’t knows and joins into some Discourse instance.
Discourse is a forum and you probably need to point a single or no-more-three point/s on your homepage and then show the default Discourse approach.
You probably need to explain how to search, how to contribute and why the forum is good for your community.
If you record some little video, that could be the all-in-one solution for keeping the crowd sharing and not expecting others do things.
You can try all the plugins around but no-one will change the concept that Discourse is a forum and not a Social Media instance.
