The discussion revolves around whether Discourse forums should default to a category homepage instead of a latest content feed, especially for new forums with minimal content. tophee suggests this improves user orientation and proposes a dedicated “default homepage” setting for easier configuration, noting the current method—reordering the top menu—is unintuitive. HAWK and dax recommend rerunning the setup wizard to change the homepage, while codinghorror hints at possibly removing the top menu setting entirely. Users like prot-delux and John_Lehmann seek clarity on maintaining categories as default while linking the logo to “Latest” for returning users. dax clarifies users can set their own default via profile preferences. Mobile/desktop differentiation is addressed via a theme componentdax, though it disables user overrides. Chandra asks how to reset all user preferences to the site default; pfaffman and Chandra confirm an SQL command (UserOption.where("homepage_id IS NOT NULL").update_all(homepage_id: '')) can reset preferences, allowing users to customize afterward. Mark_Teo later clarifies that simply reordering the top menu in Admin > Settings > Basic Setup sets the homepage—no wizard needed. Many users find this solution effective and easy to implement.
Yes, I also realized that showing the category page by default might provide better orientation for new users and changed my homepage.
When read @HAWK’s statement, I’m wondering: if that is indeed a general “rule”, then wouldn’t it make sense to set the category page as default homepage for new forums?
Disclaimer: I’m assuming that there is a default homepage. I don’t remember whether this is something you are asked to specific in the setup process, but even if it is, there’ d seem to be something that pushed me towards choosing “Latest” as my homepage. (As a side note: it is also somewhat difficult to find how to change the homepage)
I’m not sure if that is “easier” than changing the order of your top menu items. If you know that this is what you have to do, I’d say that’s the easiest. But if you don’t know what to do, searching the settings will point you neither to the wizard nor to the order of the items in the top menu.
Suggestion: perhaps it would help to change the help text for the top menu settings from this:
to: “Determine which items appear in the homepage navigation and in what order (the first item is the default homepage). Example: latest|…”
But the more user friendly solution would be to add a site setting “default home page”, simple because the way things are now, it’s a bit of a nuisance that you have to remove all the items in order to change the first one.
I am about to use the strategy mentioned here which is to set the default homepage to Categories (I assume by re-ordering that list, which is a little confusing), but then setting the Logo to link to Latest. This enables new users to encounter the Categories, but generally to after that be encountering latest.
If this is to be removed, can you explain how we could address the given concerns? Or link to discussion about this.
That global setting is still active however it’s more simple if you choose the homepage when you run the wizard the first time (and subsequently). Whether the setting is hidden or not for you is irrelevant (you can always use the wizard).
You can certainly change the link to the logo.
I also want to remember you that now the users can choose the default page from the preferences on the user profile:
Has there ever been any thought to having a different homepage layout for desktop and mobile? Or, as a new user, have I simply not found a setting which does this?
I have toyed with the idea of having the desktop come up in category - latest mode, if only there was a way to have the mobile default to just show latest.
