A reddit-ish theme for Discourse

:information_source: Summary A Discourse theme that looks a little like reddit
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository github.com/awesomerobot/discourse-redditish-theme
:question: Install Guide How to install a theme or theme component
:open_book: New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

:warning: This is still a work in progress and not all features are supported yet (bulk topic select for example), but it’s usable as-is with most of the default Discourse feature set.

Other things to note:

  • There’s no up/down-voting, though if there’s interest I can look at how this can integrate with Discourse Topic Voting Plugin and Discourse Post Voting Plugin

  • Strongly recommend using it with the desktop category page style: category boxes with subcategories (I’ve also overridden the default mobile categories page to use this style!).

  • This dramatically changes the layout so it won’t be compatible with every plugin or theme-component.

  • Some areas are more well-polished than others at the moment, tag pages, user pages, chat, etc can use some more work.

  • If you haven’t updated Discourse recently, you should do it before using this theme, as it required a couple new plugin outlets.

Some more screenshots

78 Likes

Wooww great job, i really really love this theme. Thank for all Kris.

8 Likes

oh nice you did the create new topic box.

nice theme, i like the boxes layout. beautiful work as always :slight_smile: :clap:

6 Likes

Super nice, thanks!

Where I need to look if I want ‘about’, ‘welcome’, ‘recent topics’ and ‘top tags’ boxes and/or the ‘Create topic’ header?

I wonder if I can implement this perks in another theme, just to keep away from Reddit but take some of their UI/UX features :slight_smile:

2 Likes

A beautiful theme.

  • You should have the User name who posted the latest post (with the last posting time, and that user’s Avatar): The purpose is to update the user to know that it is a “live” topic.
  • There should be a total number of likes, next to the comment button

Want to know what the Mobile version looks like?

3 Likes

this is cool :eyes:

I will use it in my forum

2 Likes

Hey @awesomerobot,

This is incredible!

I’m not seeing the Welcome box and the Recent Topics on the homepage. Do those functionalities require a more recent version of Discourse? If so, which one is required?

Many thanks!

You will need to update to latest as per:

2 Likes

This is awesome @awesomerobot , thank you.
i always was waiting for something like this.
a question please, this supports RTL for now?

2 Likes

Hello Jay :wave:

It seems it does:

LTR

RTL

4 Likes

I also seem to be unable to get the Welcome and Recent elements to display on the page. I’m running the latest Discourse beta version. I’ve tried three different browsers and looked over the settings but can’t seem to work out what’s wrong.

Impressive!

Having a look at the forum linked in your profile it seems it’s on f736748853, which is from the 19th June. My test site, for instance, was updated this morning and is on ea0b8ca38c - so I think there’s a good chance that if you update your forum from your /upgrade page everything should then magically work. :crossed_fingers: :slight_smile:

You can tell precisely which version you’re on using this link here on your dashboard:

3 Likes

I’m also on my test server but it’s in sync with the production one so yes, you’re quite right! I’ve been relying on the smiley face to tell me when it’s time to upgrade but I guess it doesn’t account for latest builds. I’ve upgraded now and the missing bits of the page have appeared. :raised_hands:

Thanks for the spot.

3 Likes

@awesomerobot I’ve implemented this theme on my forum and have a few members trialling it to get some feedback.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to share, bookmark or flag a topic, unless I’m missing something. The usual Reply button is also not there. People can reply to a post directly but I think they like the UX of the large button.

Screenshot 2023-07-03 at 18.15.04

Am I missing something or is this how the theme works in the current version?

1 Like

That’s the expected functionality of the theme at the moment, I figured since reddit doesn’t have these footer buttons I’d remove them here too.

I can add them back since they’re missed, they’re hidden with one line of CSS

#topic-footer-buttons .topic-footer-main-buttons {
  display: none;
}

So if you’d like to unhide them immediately you can add this CSS to a theme component

#topic-footer-buttons .topic-footer-main-buttons {
  display: block;
}
4 Likes

I thought that might be the case. Some people may like the clean interface and prefer to stay closer ro the Reddit look-and-feel so maybe have it as a theme setting, if that’s possible?

1 Like

More feedback from my users. Looking at the Latest view shows a preview of the first post in a topic. It would be useful if the last unread post were the preview so people can scan latest replies before diving in to the topic. Is this technically possible to implement?

1 Like

I’ve added a hide topic footer controls setting to the theme, if you disable this they’ll appear again

This isn’t possible from within a theme, showing the images/text from the first post is a feature built-in to Discourse that I’m utilizing here… changing the image would require a custom plug-in. Showing the text from the latest reply is likely possible in a theme… but could possibly cause some performance issues, so a plugin to serialize that would also be the better route (though I’m not sure how feasible it would be… might still cause some performance issues as a plugin).

Thanks, @awesomerobot. I added the CSS (and now how I know how to do that so another Discourse learning box ticked) to show the reply button but I appreciate the enhancement.

Even without knowing how the software works in detail I had a feeling that the ‘last post in preview’ idea would be complicated and performance impacting. I don’t think it matters in many themes but with this one it’s food for thought. Might have a crack it myself when I get to that level of expertise.

1 Like