Help recreating a per-category hero banner (image + overlay text) without layout shift

[Lilly (Lillian Louis)]

@Steve_John

• Tips for using per-category uploads or theme settings to set the background image cleanly.

I think the closest theme-component I’ve seen to what you are looking for is this one:

Discourse Category Headers theme component

This theme component provides a number of enhancements for the Discourse category header. The ‘standard’ Discourse category header is displayed at the top of each category page, above the navigation links and list of topics. It is normally only visible if a category logo image has been uploaded in the category settings. The header displays the logo and a short description of the category, taken from the first paragraph of the ‘About the… category’ topic. This theme component provides the foll…

You could have a look at that one to get some ideas, but it sounds like you may need to build a custom component. You could post in Marketplace if you are looking to hire some developers to help.