Have users complete form when creating a topic?

I’m hoping to revisit this. I’m hoping there is a way on the front end to have users fill in what looks (to them) like a form. So, for example, when they go to create a topic, they would see something like:

“Name”


“Location”


“Issue”


This can all stay on the front end. I have no need (would be nice, but no need right now) to parse the different sections of what users submit–it can all be submitted like it is now. The goal is to ensure a more uniform submission from users, and give them a clean UI when there are different prompts.

The difference between this and what is available now by adding in a topic template:
  1. The user could not delete these prompts (ie, could not delete “Name”, “Location”, and “Issue”).

  2. Ideally, I could add some form like styling, to make it more obvious to the user where they are supposed to type. To enable a cleaner UI for a user creating a topic in the case there are several different prompts. With topic templates, the user has to create their own space to type in their responses for each prompt. Additionally, the create topic window starts looking pretty crowded when you have different prompts in the case of using the current topic templates.

@sam had previously replied:

It seems like indeed this should be possible. My biggest issue: How do I in a theme component (or plugin) change what appears within the create topic window? Right now, it seems like an iframe black box when I’ve tried to do it.

I know there my be some way to get in there, given that that is what topic templates do and what the placeholder plugin does. But I haven’t figured out how they do it.

Any tips on what I can do with code to change what’s in a topic create window?

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