The discussion revolves around creating custom landing pages in Discourse. Initially, users sought ways to create unique landing pages for specific purposes, such as highlighting topics or embedding content like a fTELNET client. While no native solution existed at the time, plugins like Discourse Home Page, ProCourse Static Pages, and DiscPage were suggested, though they were noted to be unstable. Over time, a page publishing feature was introduced awesomerobot, but it was not considered a true landing page solution by some. Users explored workarounds, including using theme components to redirect the homepage or leveraging the custom-homepage outlet for dynamic content based on query parameters awesomerobot. The conversation highlights that while plugins offer temporary fixes, a more robust solution involves custom themes and the new homepage customization features, though documentation remains limited.
I understand the normal homepage, and modifying that. I also understand banners and pinning topics.
What if I wanted a unique landing page for referring people from a specific location, maybe I wanted to highlight specific topics on this landing page etc – is there anyway to do something like this?
I found this topic, but it didn’t solve my concern
No, not at the moment. We’ve discussed the ability to create static pages in Discourse, and will possibly have something within the next 6 months or so (sorry can’t be more specific than that!).
Is there anything specific that are you looking to accomplish (I assume custom layout is one big component) that wouldn’t be covered by linking to a specific topic?
There are a couple plugins that may help but not sure how extensive to acheive your desired end.
This plugin may help but plugin author said it may break along the way.
There is also a couple of plugins that do forms of static pages like
And
If I may so bold to bump this topic, I’ve been researching to create some sort of static page to embed fTELNET client on - has there been any further development or will embedded js script work with DiscPage or ProCourse?
Have you explored Landing Pages Plugin 🛩 yet?
@nathank No - Will give it a shot!
So what happened in the end? Do I need to use a load balancer or is there a native function for that? It’s been almost 5 years since you mentioned it, currently it can only be done with plugins, but apparently these plugins tend to break the system.
we have a page publishing feature now, check out Page Publishing
That’s not a landing page.
I wonder… what if a Theme Component were used to redirect / to the published page? Not sure how many things would break, though.
That makes me think of the custom homepage feature. Not sure if there is a documentation topic. The topic I remember is
The ‘documentation’ is in DEV: allow themes to render their own custom homepage by pmusaraj · Pull Request #26291 · discourse/discourse · GitHub, I believe. I don’t believe there is a proper Documentation topic for that.
It is if you land people on it 
If it needs to be the homepage, it is also possible to have entirely custom homepages using the custom-homepage outlet in a theme: DEV: allow themes to render their own custom homepage by pmusaraj · Pull Request #26291 · discourse/discourse · GitHub… going this route you’d be able to build custom content based on whatever conditions you need. You could show different content using a query param like /?src=ad-campaign for example