Request for dynamic page creator

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Mister requests a dynamic page creator feature for Discourse, highlighting the need for enhanced page creation capabilities beyond existing static page plugins. The proposed features include: pages with or without a Discourse header (similar to telegra.ph), embedding widgets like polls or tables, integration with advertising plugins, a templating engine (e.g., {{user.name}}), and rich configuration options such as user role restrictions and category-based access. While such functionality could be built via the Plugin API, Mister suggests it would be ideal for Discourse to implement it directly, emphasizing that improved theme and page editors with better syntax highlighting and dynamic page creation tools would elevate Discourse into a more versatile platform, potentially resembling an article blog. The post notes that ChatGPT was used to translate and refine the original Russian text.

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In Discourse, additional static web pages are already implemented through the following plugins:

However, I would like to see an implementation in Discourse, or through its plugins, that would support the following features:

  1. The ability to create pages with and without the Discourse header (where “without” would be similar to platforms like telegra.ph, for example).
  2. Embedding various “widgets,” such as polls or tables.
  3. Possible integration with an advertising plugin.
  4. A page “templating engine” (the ability to access external APIs or display information such as the user’s name, e.g., through {{user.name}}).
  5. Rich configuration options, such as restricting users from using certain links or widgets based on the category, fully transitioning from forum topics to pages, or enabling page creation only for administrators.

I believe implementing such functionality would take Discourse to the next level and could even transform the forum into more of an “article blog” if desired. While this could likely be created by someone familiar with the Plugin API and theme component creation, as Discourse provides a fairly rich (though somewhat poorly documented) API through components, widgets, etc., it would be ideal to see this implemented directly by Discourse as a plugin or new feature.

In general, it seems that an improved, more open theme component editor (with better syntax highlighting, for example) and an editor for creating both dynamic and static pages (expandable with components or with built-in page creation functionality) would be the future of Discourse, and it’s something they’ll likely want to implement sooner or later.

This topic is just my attempt to express that some users need this functionality.

P.s. ChatGPT was used for translation and correction of the text from Russian to English

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