Current Projects - May 2026
Welcome to Current Projects, a monthly newsletter about what we’re currently working on at Discourse.
Your questions and feedback are welcome!
Recently finished
Improvements to the Topic Voting plugin
The Topic Voting plugin got a few updates! Your ideas categories can now benefit from better sorting, members prompts to change notification levels after voting, voting button design improvements, and new badges for members who submit great ideas. Learn more here and here.
Improvements to Calendar and Events plugin setup
It’s now much faster and easier to create an events category via the Calendar and Events plugin, so you can host community events and display them in a calendar with just a few clicks. Learn more.
Show decommissioned sites on ID Communities page
It’s now possible to see which sites are inactive on your Discourse ID communities list, so that you can identify and remove them easily.
New version compatibility strategy for themes & plugins
We’ve finished implementing and documenting the new branch-based compatibility strategy for themes and plugins. This makes it even easier for developers to use the latest and greatest Discourse features without needing to compromise on support for older Discourse versions. For more information, check out the documentation.
Wrapping up
Bringing GIFs component into Discourse core
We’re working on incorporating the discourse-gifs component into Discourse core to make it easier for communities to access and much simpler to set up. We’re especially excited to share that hosted customers won’t need to bring their own API key — your members will be sharing their favorite GIFs in moments.
Add theme choice to new Discourse onboarding process
We’ve added a theme selection step for admins to choose a theme or install a new one early in the onboarding process, so they can start customizing Discourse even earlier in the site setup journey and get started.
New JS build system for Discourse core
Following the success of our new theme & plugin JS build systems over the last year, we’re bringing a similar change to Discourse core. This will be fully backwards-compatible, and bring significantly improved developer experience. Keep an eye on dev-news for more info!
In full swing
New layout and blocks system for theme customizations
We merged an initial experimental version of a new system for theme developers to define the layout for inserting custom blocks of content into any page. We are now using this for our own theme here on meta: https://meta.discourse.org/t/rebuilding-the-meta-branded-theme-new-icons-a-custom-homepage-and-a-first-look-at-the-blocks-api/400013/
We’re continuing work on refining and documenting it before marking the API as ready for general use.
Reporting and analytics improvements
We’re continuing our work to improve site traffic reporting, the Data Explorer plugin, and designing an updated admin dashboard to make it easier to access and interpret data about your community’s health and value. At the moment, we’re focused on improving traffic reporting and updating the admin dashboard.
Improvements to the Calendar and Events plugin
We’re working on a number of improvements to the Calendar and Events plugin, such as making it easier to create events in the composer and directly on the calendar. So far, we’ve gotten started with more flexible recurring event RSVPs, but there will be more to share here soon!
Improvements to officially hosted Discourse experience
After improving our website signup experience by unifying signup flows for all hosted plans to use Discourse ID, we’re now working to make plan upgrades and downgrades easier by introducing a dedicated page to change plans. And to help keep your hosted sites safer, we’re bringing enhancements to the review queue starting with the Free plan.
Kicking off
Server API Improvements
We’re starting to plan improvements to the usability & consistency of our server APIs. This work is likely to result in a more streamlined API with clear versioning, documentation, and backwards-compatibility commitments. Watch this space for more information!