Hi, I am looking for a chat-like forums, for something similar to what Discord has done with their forum-channels. Discourse is better from a SEO and openness perspective. That’s why I am looking for this functionality on Discourse.
The main feature that I am looking for is to be able to open topics on the category page to the right from topic-list. The topic should open already scrolled to the bottom.
Additionally, with this design, the following features would fit nicely:
full width
list of categories in left panel (like channels in Discord)
folders to organize categories (like folders used to organize channels in Discord)
already opened box to write reply instead of reply button
also it would be great to have chat-channels like they are on Discord (in terms of Discourse it would mean categories where users write posts instead of creating topics)
Interesting idea. I like how it gives the user a three levels of nesting at once, though there is something to be said for readability if the screen has all three levels of hierarchy: Sidebar/Categories → Latest → Topic.
I think this would be quite cool to see as a theme/theme component. How would you keep the screen tidy and readable in this layout? I feel like the topic getting half of the screen, with the other half being sidebar and latest is a little bit too noisey. For example, hiding the sidebar in this view might be an option, though many users are not aware of this functionality and it would lose the benefit of access to the highest level of Topic hierarchy(Categories).
I like this idea. Many of my users come from Discord so a familiar layout with the additional amazing capabilities of Discourse is very welcome on my part.
However, as Tristan said it can be bit noisey. On mobile in discord you swipe left and right. However, on something web based swiping on mobile is the forwards / backwards functionality. Not sure on how you’d get around that.
I think most of the users or a least a substantial amount of users would not mind the perceived clutter. You just get used to focus onto the right side of the screen.
Additionally, with this design, the following features would fit nicely:
full width
list of categories in left panel (like channels in Discord)
folders to organize categories (like folders used to organize channels in Discord)
Additionally, it would be great to have open box to write reply instead of reply button.
It would be also great to have chat channels like they are on Discord. In terms of Discourse it would be categories where users write posts instead of topics.
I just realized that for our community, the ideal community building software would be a platform with Discord-like design, but with Discourse-like authorization and hosting model - to be able to serve it from our domain, have it accessible directly with no “Join Server” Discord nonsense, have it open and indexable by Google.
Do you think it’s possible to develop?
In summary, in my opinion, the ideal community building software would be a platform with Discord-like design (mix of chat channels and forum-like channels), but with traditional forum-like authorization and hosting model - to be able to serve it from separate domain, have it accessible directly with no “Join Server” Discord nonsense, have it open and indexable by Google.
I think the first who creates this chat/forum hybrid platform is going to win big share in community building market!
I have created the same post on NodeBB forum also;)) Guys, we need it, so who is going to be first?
Discourse and Discord are both very good separately but work well together. See more in the blog below. They can both coexist but one is asynchronous and one is synchronous (discord) its a different way of communicating.
Thanks @ondrej for clarification about “New Post” button.
Is it possible to place links to public chats into left panel (ideally between categories) like it is in Discord?
If this is possible (and ideally opening of topics on the categories page to the right from topic list is added) it would satisfy our community building needs.
One of our talented designers, @chapoi voiced this idea late last year.
This is definitely something we have toyed around playing with in a theme component. I’d go further and say this isn’t just a chat specific feature as well. The other large software using this design is Notion, which is based primarily on document/topic structure that forums tend to use.
Yup, I have a long been a fan of the notion panel-slide-in design.
I looked at getting something going in a theme component, but unfortunately a topic page is rather complex and not so easily slotted in elsewhere.
I have been thinking about displaying a trimmed down version of the topic (no timeline or summary for example) as a sort of quick preview, with the option to click through to get the full functionality.
We already have a 3 panel layout when using chat threads in full page, and I don’t think that’s too noisy, so from a design perspective I see this work really well.
