Discourse themes are often used to add self-contained areas of content to the Discourse UI. Historically, ‘Plugin Outlets’ have been the only way to achieve this, with some theme-components providing pluggable systems like Right Sidebar Blocks to make that available in a more friendly way.
We’re introducing a ‘blocks’ framework in Discourse Core which will allow developers to build self-contained blocks, which theme authors can then arrange and style via a theme.
An experimental version of this system is available in Discourse core right now. You can see an example usage on Meta’s homepage[1]. Note that right now the API is marked as experimental, and we may make breaking changes at any time. It is not yet recommended for use in production environments.
Watch this space for updates, and links to Documentation when it’s ready.
Make sure you’re using the ‘meta branded theme’ ↩︎