Hey guys Disclaimer: No AI was hurt in building this theme component :smiley: Yes guys, I am guilty of shamelessly vibe-coding a rip off of the Topic Cards theme component. Hence a huge shoutout to the original authors and contributors for the great work! While at first this was a fork, over 80% of the code and structure was completely rewritten. We added a ton of new features and on first glance all the various settings can be quite overwhelming. Advanced Topic Cards - Preliminary Release With our rewrite you get: more granular control where topic cards are displayed Two different topic card layouts Featured Cards Carousel at top of Latest page For a full list detailed scroll down below :down_arrow: Feel free to test it, run it, copy it and roast it here in the thread! I am really excited about getting feedback on the result: https://github.com/jrgong420/advanced-topic-cards Known Issues: Redundant TC settings: Some of the features regarding thumbnail and card height are redundant/not of value anymore Desktop view lacks horizontal scrolling via touchpad/mousewheel (Embla provides a plugin for that, we haven’t had Action Buttons are not as “polished”, need better visual rework Summary of the improvements and features: Per‑category, per‑device layouts Configure cards separately for desktop and mobile as list (image left, content right) or grid (image above, content below). You can choose exactly which categories use which layout on each platform. Example Grid Layout: Samen-Verzeichnis - Forum | Cannabisanbauen.net Example Card Layout: Growreports - Forum | Cannabisanbauen.net Subcategory layout inheritance Optionally inherit card layouts from a parent category so you don’t have to configure every subcategory by hand. Home page featured topics carousel (Embla) A featured topics carousel you can place on discovery routes (home/latest/top/categories), powered by Embla Carousel, with settings for slides per view, looping, alignment, drag behavior, and more. Example: forum.cannabisanbauen.net (home page) Subcategory carousel on category pages Turn the subcategory list on a category page into a horizontal carousel, with controls for which parent categories and how many children are required before it shows. Example: Growreports - Forum | Cannabisanbauen.net Visual customization options Thumbnail placeholders (Font Awesome icon) when a topic has no image Card border radius presets Card title font size choices (using Discourse’s font tokens) Optional fixed card/grid heights and thumbnail size controls Richer card components New card structure with: Byline (OP avatar + username + optional publish date) Action buttons (Details + Featured Link CTA) Inline tags (category badge + tags inside the card body) Compatible with other Theme Components/Plugins: Calendar + Event Plugin: Display Event Date after Title User Portfolio Theme Component: Display Features planned: More fine grained control for Featured Carousel: Additional plugin outlets, page routes, etc Expand/Collapse Featured Topic Card Carousel (+ auto-expand based on new/unread topics)

Thank you so much for sharing - this is terrific!

Very nice!! Great work :+1: Remarks: Does not work on non-category discovery routes like /latest or tag selections without category. The images don’t always align well [image] even when there are no images [image] The carousel is VERY nice but shouldn’t it be a separate component? Would be nice to be able to exempt topics without a picture from the carousel.

Thx for the feedback! [image] RGJ: The images don’t always align well Images look indeed whacky, same goes for the topic excerpt text being cut off Would it be better from UX UI perspective to add padding around images in list layout? [image] RGJ: The carousel is VERY nice but shouldn’t it be a separate component? That’s a fair point. Albeit my intention was to basically share same CSS styles for the carousel and regular topic cards. [image] RGJ: Would be nice to be able to exempt topics without a picture from the carousel. :+1:

Salut, ton code à besoin d’une petite mise à jour :wink: [image]

Hey @gilles, better late than never. AI coding has accelerated too fast; it might even be better and cheaper to re-create it from scratch, especially since Discourse now comes with its own slider components that you can take advantage of. But I will tackle that one soon and see how to make it a bit more future proof and re"prompt" the whole thing from scratch and make it Horizon theme compatible as well…

🔥 Roast my Theme Component: Advanced Topic Cards

Development

gilles August 27, 2026, 10:31am 5

Hi, your code needs a little update

Topic		Replies	Views
Topic Cards Theme component official , topic-cards	108	9939	July 21, 2026
Featured Topics Theme component	72	8679	October 29, 2026
Horizon theme and Topic Thumbnails component Feature topic-list-thumbnails , horizon-theme	22	1193	November 5, 2026
Don't show Topic Cards' style in the Suggested topics Feature topic-cards	1	246	September 22, 2025
High context topic cards are now enabled by default in the Horizon theme Announcements horizon-theme	9	662	November 5, 2026

🔥 Roast my Theme Component: Advanced Topic Cards

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