Custom home page - directory listing by topic using APIs

Hello,
We want to use Discourse to create User Curated Directory listing of their favorite Products and have others discuss on the same. Basically, it will be a ecommerce directory with certain taxonomy of products.

But, the key issue is the Home page customization. We want to have a custom home page that looks like below. Each icon takes user to a category, then there will be all listing of products.

Any ideas on home page and API usage ?