The discussion centers on the Featured Topics theme component, a tool for highlighting topics by tag in card or list layouts. manuel introduces the component, noting it is forked from the official Featured Tiles Component and available on GitLab. Key features include selecting specific tags to feature and choosing between Cards, List, or None layouts.
Users discuss implementation details and limitations. jimkleiber asks about image sources, with manuel clarifying that images are pulled from the first post of the topic. Decorbuz inquires about supporting “trending” topics rather than static selections; manuel explains the component is designed for specific selected topics and suggests using existing list views for dynamic feeds.
Andrew_Rowe shares CSS snippets to customize the layout, such as hiding tags, avatars, or category links, and enabling excerpts in card view. They note that while the card layout works well on mobile, the list layout has responsive design issues. manuel addresses a question about content not refreshing dynamically, stating this is by design as the content reflects the state at page load.
Finally, cogdog reports a compatibility error where the latest version claims to require Discourse 2026.8.0 or above, despite their site running 2026.8.0-latest.1, causing the theme to be automatically disabled.
 |
Summary | Highlights topics by tag in a card or list layout |
 |
Repository Link | Manuel Kostka / Discourse / Components / Featured Topics · GitLab |
 |
New to Discourse Themes? | Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes |
Install this theme component
Among other options, you can select multiple tags to feature topics and choose between the two layout options: Cards or List (or None if you want to add custom styles).
See the README for more info and the component template.
I really like it! Maybe a dumb question, but where do the images have to be stored for it to pull them?
Thanks! The image is pulled from the first post of the topic.
Honestly, I would love a Customization > Theme component like this, but for trending topics (that kind of functionality would probably require a Customization > Plugin though).
Maybe it could be implemented much more easily once Discourse works on the “hot” category topic sorting option in version 2.9? 
As for the option to show a tag in a featured card, how does it handle a topic with multiple tags? Do tags even show up on featured cards in the mobile view?
Card content is the same on mobile and desktop, just on mobile the cards wrap the content and don’t have a set height. If you have multiple featured tags on the same topic, cards will show the tag that is shown first on the default tag list. I believe this is by alphabetical order.
Regards trending topics, you can pick the list algorithm just as on the Featured Tiles component. Right now these algorithms include latest and various top selections:
How would trending be different from top-daily or top-weekly? In any case, when there’s a new sorting and filter algorithm in Discourse core, as the “hot” one mentioned, it should work on the component as well.
Well, it wouldn’t have to be limited to a certain time period. Trending topics could be from an hour ago, a day ago, a week ago, etc…
I wish I could articulate myself… 
Also, is it possible to have multiple rows of featured cards?
This component is just showing one row of cards on desktop. And as many cards as you like in one column on mobile (there’s a maximum topic count setting).
Showing more rows on desktop is easily possible if you write custom CSS for the component. But that’s not a use case I will support with the component as such, as I believe it will need a custom layout anyways.
Okay, that’s fair enough. 
I was looking to tie this Customization > Theme component in with a concept that’s being worked on.
Also, the “hot” category topic sorting option I mentioned earlier already (sort of) exists in the form of a #plugin:broken-plugin.
Okay I see.. you just made me change my wording 
I’ve written feed twice, but I changed it to column. The goal of this component is to feature specific selected topics. I don’t doubt you could also make it work more like a dynamic feed. But if that’s your goal, I’d rather just style the existing list views to get there. You know, just use a component like Topic List Previews or Topic List Thumbnails and style the list items more like cards. Working directly on the lists is all integrated with navigational elements and filters on Discourse. You won’t get that with this component.
Yeah, true. I’m just trying to look at all the options I have at my disposal. This topic was posted just as I was browsing Discourse Meta, so it ended up catching my attention.
Hmm, I only get his look when I de-select all contents 
Did you try different browsers? If it’s not a browser issue (and if it is, please let me know your setup) I could inspect the CSS on your site. But you’d need to share your url, here on on a pm.
Is this component still working?
Why shouldn’t it working anymore? It’s not marked as broken or something and it’s only 3 months old.
Loving this component, thank you so much! 
What’d be great is, if you could have a “pinned” featured topic (i.e. the “Welcome to this Forum” topic), that is always shown, even if topics are randomly chosen from #featured. I think that would be really awesome, not just for my use case but also many others. Could that be implemented?
Help @manuel ?
I love this component! But I have a small problem. 
On my admin account, I can see the cards great.
On my “regular” user account, I have dead space and the cards don’t show.
Any assistance or suggestions would be helpful before I have to figure something else out 
Looks like you use a tag that’s not visible to regular users?
You can hide tags from showing on the cards through the component settings. But the tag itself has to be visible to the group that should see the tagged topic as a featured card.
That fixed it.
I just edited my tag groups and thought I would hide that one so no one knew it was there but admin. Thank you!!
Thanks for the suggestion @diabolicvincent! Though I guess I won’t implement this as a feature. One reason is that (as mentioned on the credits), I didn’t program the logic of this component. It’s quite complex already for my taste and I don’t want to mess with it myself.
More generally, philosophically, conceptually.. 
I actually believe it’s better ui design when official content is easily distinguishable from user-generated one. In that regard I’m already not a fan of pinning topics within an otherwise dynamic list of user topics.
Is there any way to auto show latest posts without using a tag? I don’t want to use a tag to manually push the posts to the featured section.
