awesomerobot introduces a work-in-progress Discourse theme designed to mimic the visual style of Reddit. The theme features a box-based layout, a “Create Topic” header, and specific homepage widgets like “Welcome” and “Recent Topics.” While functional, the creator notes that bulk topic selection and voting mechanisms are not yet fully integrated, though there is interest in adding voting features as suggested by Zup. Users are advised to update their Discourse instance to the latest version to ensure compatibility with new plugin outlets required by the theme.
Community feedback has been largely positive, with users praising the clean interface and layout as noted by Tiago_santos and Lilly](/t/-/269466/3). However, several technical issues and feature requests have emerged. Some users reported missing homepage elements, which were resolved by updating to the latest Discourse beta as explained by JammyDodger and Octoberon](/t/-/269466/14). A bug causing errors when creating new topics was identified by Steve_Emerson](/t/-/269466/32) and fixed by the developer in post 34. The theme supports Right-to-Left (RTL) languages, confirmed by Canapin](/t/-/269466/10). Other suggestions include adding user avatars and like counts to topic lists hoangviet, enabling preview of the last unread post Octoberon, and adjusting the homepage to default to /latestsimon. Later updates addressed UI alignment issues in the navbar and topic timeline NateDhaliwal, as well as bugs regarding image clicks and admin tag page links Damian_Boon. One user shared custom CSS to achieve a full-width layout with sidebars MCATAKCIN, while another reported a display glitch with code fences in topic previews NateDhaliwal.
This is still a work in progress and not all features are supported yet (bulk topic select for example), but it’s usable as-is with most of the default Discourse feature set.
You should have the User name who posted the latest post (with the last posting time, and that user’s Avatar): The purpose is to update the user to know that it is a “live” topic.
There should be a total number of likes, next to the comment button
I’m not seeing the Welcome box and the Recent Topics on the homepage. Do those functionalities require a more recent version of Discourse? If so, which one is required?
I also seem to be unable to get the Welcome and Recent elements to display on the page. I’m running the latest Discourse beta version. I’ve tried three different browsers and looked over the settings but can’t seem to work out what’s wrong.
Having a look at the forum linked in your profile it seems it’s on f736748853, which is from the 19th June. My test site, for instance, was updated this morning and is on ea0b8ca38c - so I think there’s a good chance that if you update your forum from your /upgrade page everything should then magically work.
You can tell precisely which version you’re on using this link here on your dashboard:
I’m also on my test server but it’s in sync with the production one so yes, you’re quite right! I’ve been relying on the smiley face to tell me when it’s time to upgrade but I guess it doesn’t account for latest builds. I’ve upgraded now and the missing bits of the page have appeared.
@awesomerobot I’ve implemented this theme on my forum and have a few members trialling it to get some feedback.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to share, bookmark or flag a topic, unless I’m missing something. The usual Reply button is also not there. People can reply to a post directly but I think they like the UX of the large button.
Am I missing something or is this how the theme works in the current version?
I thought that might be the case. Some people may like the clean interface and prefer to stay closer ro the Reddit look-and-feel so maybe have it as a theme setting, if that’s possible?
More feedback from my users. Looking at the Latest view shows a preview of the first post in a topic. It would be useful if the last unread post were the preview so people can scan latest replies before diving in to the topic. Is this technically possible to implement?
I’ve added a hide topic footer controls setting to the theme, if you disable this they’ll appear again
This isn’t possible from within a theme, showing the images/text from the first post is a feature built-in to Discourse that I’m utilizing here… changing the image would require a custom plug-in. Showing the text from the latest reply is likely possible in a theme… but could possibly cause some performance issues, so a plugin to serialize that would also be the better route (though I’m not sure how feasible it would be… might still cause some performance issues as a plugin).
Thanks, @awesomerobot. I added the CSS (and now how I know how to do that so another Discourse learning box ticked) to show the reply button but I appreciate the enhancement.
Even without knowing how the software works in detail I had a feeling that the ‘last post in preview’ idea would be complicated and performance impacting. I don’t think it matters in many themes but with this one it’s food for thought. Might have a crack it myself when I get to that level of expertise.
This is still a work in progress and not all features are supported yet (bulk topic select for example), but it’s usable as-is with most of the default Discourse feature set.
