# How difficult would it be to make the Discourse UI more like Flarum?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-difficult-would-it-be-to-make-the-discourse-ui-more-like-flarum/83430
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [20 maart 2018 om 18:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-difficult-would-it-be-to-make-the-discourse-ui-more-like-flarum/83430 "2018-03-20T18:43:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 27

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### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2021 om 18:58 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-difficult-would-it-be-to-make-the-discourse-ui-more-like-flarum/83430/27 "2021-08-13T18:58:11Z")

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1. It’s surprising that you consider the text monstrous! it’s 15px by default, which I think is 1px larger than Flarum. We’re still on the small size in my opinion! If you look around at some news websites (which are optimized for easy reading), the standard is usually larger than 16px (which is the browser default). Many are closer to 20px for articles!

2. We have 6 different category page styles to choose from, they have varying amounts of information, and they can all be customized with category images. If you’re an admin you can visit a category page and add images by clicking the wrench

3. It’s possible to build a sidebar nav in a theme, though a little trickier to make it always present. There’s a theme component that does this for topic list pages: [Topic list sidebar navigation](https://meta.discourse.org/t/topic-list-sidebar-navigation/94056), though it reuses the dropdown menu so it’s not 100% what you’re after. We have to support sites with dozens of categories, which is why we tend to stick to the dropdown.

> [@GVG](#):
>
> those improvements must be made at Theme or as Plugin or by simple custom CSS?

it varies… if you want things to be smaller and more compact, that can definitely be achieved with CSS! But sidebars and other additions will need more advanced theming, some of which is covered in the [developers guide to themes.](https://meta.discourse.org/t/developer-s-guide-to-discourse-themes/93648)

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