I’ve been building my first Discourse community over the past couple weeks. It is amazing software and a lot to take in. Compared to the meta.Discourse.org layout, ours is very different and I can’t figure out what I’m missing. Here’s a shot from meta.Discourse.org, taken just now. [shot of meta.Discourse.com from 2025 Sep.] And here’s ours. Posts are displayed in blocks and are not listed across the page. No top menu dropdowns, like Categories & Tags. There might be a simple fix for this, but I’m not finding it. Thanks in advance, and thanks for Discourse! [shot of our main screen, with no top menu dropdowns, etc.] And if there’s a way to switch between various main screen layouts, can individual Categories have their own layout?

[image] RichardTE: No top menu dropdowns, like Categories & Tags. I suspect that is your theme. The default Horizon theme has this (see try.discourse.org). [image] RichardTE: And if there’s a way to switch between various main screen layouts, can individual Categories have their own layout? I think you may have to add Categories to the top menu site setting.

thx @NateDhaliwal will check out what you said. I’m using redditish themes, dark & light, so may have to change. Pity because I was enjoying the look, but not so much the layout.

I wrote the post last night. This morning I opened up meta.Discourse.org (this forum) and the layout looked the same as our own Discourse site. This confused me until I realized that I had meta set to the redditish theme, same as on our own! Lesson here is that for first-timers like me, and others, if you are experiencing layout issues, check out this here meta.Discourse.org forum, and instantly swap in the various themes like Horizon, Material, redditish, and Sam’s Simple (from selector at lower right). You’ll get new ideas and you can confirm if your troubles are coming from the theme or not. Thanks again to @NateDhaliwal & all!

like Nate said, you can also have a look and try the features at try.discourse.org too. Good luck. [image] NateDhaliwal: The default Horizon theme has this (see try.discourse.org).

[image] RichardTE: Lesson here is that for first-timers like me, and others, if you are experiencing layout issues, check out this here meta.Discourse.org forum You can also disable the customization by themes in your forum with safe mode

Thanks for the feedback. This forum has another good resource page for themes, a visual gallery of more than 20 Discourse themes, each of which links out to demo and Github pages: Theme - Discourse Meta Several are identified as “Official“ themes — “maintained by the Discourse team”. These could be a good choice for admins just starting out with Discourse. “Official” themes include: Air, Avid Reader, Discourse Classic, Fakebook, Fully, Ghost, Graceful, Horizon, Material Design, Minima, Mint, Sam’s Simple, Sublime, Zeronoise.

Our main screen looks very different with no top menu dropdowns, etc

Product Support

NateDhaliwal (Nate Dhaliwal) September 7, 2025, 11:22pm 2

I suspect that is your theme. The default Horizon theme has this (see try.discourse.org).

I think you may have to add Categories to the top menu site setting.

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Any existing theme with categories on top as cards? Product Support	4	1081	March 1, 2023
How to build a Discourse theme similar to forum.cfx.re? Community Building	2	279	June 2, 2025
What Themes are being used for these Discourse forums? Community Building	16	4610	September 30, 2024
Can a Discourse theme/template be customised to have this format? UX	4	1677	October 19, 2018
Most “traditional” or classic forum Category listing UX	7	2426	June 15, 2018

Our main screen looks very different with no top menu dropdowns, etc

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