Scale of 1-10 how difficult would it be? Hopefully this question doesn’t peeve anyone but Im torn between the two. Flarum has a really clean interface:
Topic list is centered with no lines in between, yet its still easy to read.
Search bar is all in the same sticky header and not a ‘nook’
Category markers look better, not just a 4x4 square.
Hmm… thats about it I think… Does this make sense? Sorry if this is posted to the wrong section.
Sidenote info: Im currently testing out both software even though having a hard time putting discourse on the same server vs my other 1 click install server. At least I have this working because for some reason I get a blank page when finalizing the flarum install. Really if Discourse had the same Flarum UI and features discourse currently has it be a much easier pick
Discourse has a Theming system (see themes tag) that makes the kind of changes you’re talking about just a matter of adding the right CSS rules.
You can add CSS either directly in the “Site Customisations” Admin Panel UI, or on your local machine in your editor of choice via the CLI, with the ability to preview changes instantly on your site.
If you’re not a coder, you can hire one in the marketplace.
As has already been mentioned, you can use my header search theme component for the header search part of your list.
I like the Flarum homepage as shown in the second screenshot! Not sure how doable that would be with CSS given that the categories in Discourse are a dropdown. But I like the idea of having the categories as permanent sidebar on the left hand side (while browsing topics).
It’s a nice looking design, but only when you are at the top of the page. Then the color banner disappears and you are left with just the white main header.
If you want to have a color header, then the topic banner won’t look as sexy. (would look like having two headers).
Also, the categories bullet list in Flarum doesn’t show descriptions. Did you try Material Design Stock Theme for Discourse?
Hey @lll I didnt see your reply before, and I didn’t test yours out before seeing bts’s version but I like that you did Javascript, leads to more connection when editing/change styles. It would be awesome if this was a theme component, idk how to do that yet but here’s what I did with bts’ code:
<!-- After Header section -->
<!-- PLAYING TECHNIQUE -->
<div class="custom-cat-header custom-cat-header-nites-cinema">
<a href="https://forum.troygrady.com/c/playing-technique"><h1>Playing Technique</h1></a>
<p>Pickslanting, chunking, fretting, motion mechanics — ask your technical questions here.</p>
<img src="https://d11a6trkgmumsb.cloudfront.net/original/3X/c/b/cb4bec8901221d4a646e45e1fa03db3a65e17f59.png">
</div>
I added that img src things as a random idea I had after I was done with doing the below edit. Obviously you gotta make another style rule to make sure the img/icon fits in the header (I did it via inspect elements), the main thing I was going for:
/* In common CSS */
/* PLAYING TECHNIQUE */
.custom-cat-header-nites-cinema {display: none;}
body.category-nites-cinema .custom-cat-header-nites-cinema {
display: block;
background: url('http://wallpaperscraft.com/image/starry_sky_tree_milky_way_radiance_120245_602x339.jpg') 0px -300px fixed no-repeat;}
.custom-cat-header-playing-technique h1 {color: #d62e1f;}
body.category-playing-technique .custom-cat-header-all-categories {display: none;}
/* repeat for all other categories! */
This is what I did on my old forum version of bbpress which was a edit of a clone to make it look like flarum, Reference: https://github.com/Sceko/bbFlarum
but I added in background image and fixed position to make it look cool
So theres gonna be a bit of redundancy if you choose to have category image and description turned on, unless you wanna have different stuff in the header or just a background. Just gonna have to decide and finagle with the theme because I dont think category image and description is a themeable thing, its a build it setting for discourse.
Still awesome to have these options. All im gonna have is 2 main themes for my forums. Sometimes i get in an indecisive/perfectionist loop
Yea the example you posted and the one I edited, it shows up on 2 of those locations (for category banner)
Off the top of your head is there a way to just show it on one of those pages (ie. Only on topic pages?[ The actual posts inside the category] ) vss CSS? If not do you think JavaScript could do it?
Well my edit I was gonna post is this: (For disabling the category description and logo only in the category page and nowhere else)
.category-heading {
clear: both;
display: none;
}
Then @awesomerobot comes along and totally 1ups me,lol. Yea dude that looks way better than the manual edits I was gonna do
I put together a rough theme component for this so you don’t have to create a bunch of redundant markup to show/hide… This will pull the appropriate category name, description, and background/text colors when you’re on a category list page.
I add this in my forum and it’s perfect! A little thing is that it takes only the first lines of the description of the categories and don’t show links.
