carlossouza struggled to change the theme in Discourse, finding that installed themes didn’t visibly alter the UI as expected — particularly the persistent sidebar and welcome banner. After hours of frustration, they discovered that removing the sidebar required changing the “Navigation menu” setting to “Header Dropdown” carlossouza, and hiding the welcome banner needed custom CSS or toggling the new site setting Enable welcome bannerMoin. carlossouza suggested that the initial admin setup wizard should include basic layout options like sidebar and banner visibility — a suggestion HAWK confirmed is already being implemented. merefield clarified the difference between Themes and Theme Components, while pfaffman reminded users to ensure the correct theme is selected in settings. merefield also noted that the “Dropdown” navigation is the recommended and classic layout, even if it feels outdated to some. The thread reflects common user confusion around theme behavior and highlights ongoing improvements to Discourse’s onboarding experience.
I lost an entire day trying to set up AWS Cognito passwordless login.
It simply doesn’t work.
After giving up and accepting that I’ll ask users to create logins and passwords using the default Discourse system, I moved on to what should be the most basic task: changing the theme.
I’ve installed several themes, marked them as “Active”, and the UI confirms they’re enabled — but nothing changes.
This feels like it should be the easiest thing to do, yet it’s completely broken. What am I missing?
And to add to @pfaffman’s note, make sure you understand the distinction between Themes and Theme Components - you have to add the latter to the former and users can only select one of the former at a time.
Thanks for your prompt response, and apologies for the tone of my previous message. I was just frustrated after losing two days trying to set up the Discourse app.
I ended up disabling the hosted site and decided to go with the self-hosted version instead.
My frustration stemmed from the fact that, after installing several different themes, I couldn’t remove the sidebar and the welcome message from the homepage. The screenshots of the themes didn’t show those components, but even after installing them, both the sidebar and the welcome message continued to appear in my setup.
After many hours, I finally learned that to remove the sidebar, I had to change the “Navigation menu” setting from “Sidebar” to “Header Dropdown.” I also discovered that removing the welcome message required creating a new theme and manually adding the following CSS:
.welcome-banner {
display: none !important;
}
Initially, I (mistakenly) expected that installing a theme would automatically give me the layout shown in its screenshot, without needing additional configuration or CSS changes. That’s why it felt like the themes “weren’t working.” But I understand now. I’m just a regular user, and I eventually figured it out.
A suggestion: during the first admin access, during the wizard, when the system asks few configuration questions (forum name, description, font, etc.), maybe it should also ask for these basic configuration questions like presence of the sidebar and welcome message.
If that’s too hard to implement, just mention that these basic layout items can be disabled in /admin/whatever.
