Easy way to make front page category columns?

UX
1

I’m the Community Director for an indie web series forum and we’ve got categories like “ask the community” and “job postings” which, as you can imagine, are pretty dissimilar. Right now our front page is just the latest posts in all categories, which is working fine, but I’m interested in exploring a column layout, with, perhaps, the most recent 10 threads in each category displayed. Two categories a row, with as many rows as there are pairs of categories.

Is there a plugin to test how that would look/work?

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2

You lost me a bit when you got to here, but have you checked out the idea of using the ‘Category and Latest Topics’ option as your homepage? It sounds similar to what you’re asking for.

image

If not, can you sketch up what you have in mind?

3

Nah that’s not quite what I’m looking for. Sorry- I’m the content mod, not really the coding person haha. Here’s a quick wireframe sketch of what I was thinking:

IMG_6422
IMG_6422.JPG2448×3264 1.07 MB

4

Cool – that looks a lot like Boxes with Featured Topics.

(Note – that is for subcategories rather than top level categories.)

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5

Nice yeah that’s definitely more the direction I was looking. Is there a version of this for top level categories, specifically for the front-page/ landing page? The idea is to make it a little more organized so people with different needs can easily discern the different options they have to engage

6

I did some digging and found a similar request here but it is so far unanswered.

I haven’t seen this solved anywhere but let’s see if anyone else can shed light.

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7

There is no version of this for top level categories, only subcategories.

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8

Is there a plan to make this available for top level categories? Or something similar?

9

Not that I’m aware of – we’re a bit under the pump at the moment!

If it’s important you could get someone to scope the work for you in the Marketplace.

10

Or you could perhaps use CSS to make 2-column cat layout, just saying.

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11

I’m assuming given the convo so far that they don’t have the in-house capability and need someone to help – but that could be an unfair assumption.

12

It actually didn’t occur to me :stuck_out_tongue:
Is this the case, @Bri_Castellini?

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13

Could also do what Feverbee did. Love it by the way :slight_smile:

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14

Thanks. :slight_smile:

That was a fair bit of work and would cost a few thousand $. No plugins involved though so you can implement it on a standard or business plan.

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15

It’s really, really impressive, @HAWK!
But I wonder, did you do any UX testing on it after deploying? (Just curious)

16

No – I launched it the week before I left to take up a job here.

From a UX perspective there are things that I would do differently but we had to work within the constraints of not using plugins (and stakeholders that didn’t always see things the way I did).

Are there particular things that you’re curious about? If so, jump into this topic so we don’t go OT here.

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17

No, the fact is that I’m working on somewhat similar solution now myself, so it’s just a professional curiosity.
EOT from me!

Getting back to the main topic, I will be happy to help. If @Bri_Castellini would be able to find some funds for this it would be nice, but I am open for other ways of cooperation.
Kind regards!

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18

No funds to speak of at the moment, sadly. We barely have the funds to pay me! We have an in-house developer but he’s more focused on our consumer-facing site and not our Discourse-run forum, so a lot of this stuff falls to me, the employee with an MFA in TV Writing (ie- not coding). This isn’t a huge deal right now, though- just something I was thinking about and would love at some point to test out. Thanks!

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19

oh snap yeah I really like this. With some slight tweaks that could totally work… did they use CSS or install a theme, or do you not know?

20

They is me. :slight_smile: That was my last job.

It’s CSS, yes. (Well, the bit you can see is.)