The discussion on Alternative post templates began with trusktr suggesting the idea of having alternative views/layouts for posts, similar to WordPress, where posts in certain categories could have unique layouts/templates. merefield pointed out that a lot can be achieved with CSS, and david agreed that making these options more powerful and discoverable would be great, sharing links to theme components that can achieve design changes, such as topic-cards and topic-list-thumbnails. merefield and david clarified that the discussion was about both topic list and topic layouts. merefield also mentioned that a Locations Plugin already exists, which can display geolocated posts on a map instead of a list, addressing trusktr’s example use case.
Having some alternative views/layouts for posts could be nice, like what WordPress has. Essentially templates based on post type.
The feature could allow posts in certain categories (or other criteria), or category pages themselves, to have unique layouts/templates other than the default.
Plugin authors could then publish alternative layouts.
The only issue is they might not fit with an overall theme. Eh well, win some lose some.
The use cases could be interesting: for example a category page for geolocated posts could be a map instead of a list of posts.
WordPress started as being for “blogs” but the flexibility really makes it usable for just about anything. So likewise with a few more similar features as custom post templates, Discourse could be molded more easily for unique purposes.
