Add custom content that only appears on your homepage

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A very common situation you’ll find yourself in as a theme developer is the need to create content that only shows on the homepage of your community.

You might add some HTML to the “After Header” section of your theme, which will then appear on every page. You can jump through some hoops in CSS to hide this everywhere except the homepage… but instead let’s use a Discourse theme to create a component with content that is only visible on your homepage.

If you’re unfamiliar with Discourse themes check out Beginner's guide to using Discourse Themes and Structure of themes and theme components

In your Discourse theme you’ll need to setup the following directory structure:

:file_folder: javascripts/discourse/components/
:file_folder: javascripts/discourse/connectors/

From here we’re going to create an Ember component. You can find more about Ember components from their documentation: Ember.js Guides - Guides and Tutorials - Ember Guides

But for now this will be a simple component. The component will consist of two files, one containing the logic and another the template.

:page_facing_up: javascripts/discourse/components/custom-homepage-content.js

import Component from "@glimmer/component";
import { inject as service } from "@ember/service";
import { defaultHomepage } from "discourse/lib/utilities";

export default class CustomHomepageContent extends Component {
  @service router;

  get isHomepage() {
    const { currentRouteName } = this.router;
    return currentRouteName === `discovery.${defaultHomepage()}`;
  }
}

This creates a isHomepage getter, which checks the router service for the currentRouteName — if the route name matches your homepage (as dictated by site settings) then it will return true

Now we need our template

:page_facing_up: javascripts/discourse/components/custom-homepage-content.hbs

{{#if this.isHomepage}}
  <h1>This is my homepage HTML content</h1>
{{/if}}

The template checks the isHomepage getter, and will display your content if it’s true. You can add any HTML you want between the {{#if}} blocks.

Now that our component is created, we need to add it to Discourse somewhere. For this step you’ll need to decide which plugin outlet to utilize. These are areas throughout Discourse where we’ve added a little code for developers to hook into. You can search Discourse for these on Github, or browse for them using the Plugin outlet locations theme component.

For custom homepages, above-main-container is a common choice, so let’s use that.

We need to create our connector file in the correct directory:

:page_facing_up: javascripts/discourse/connectors/above-main-container/custom-homepage-connector.hbs

<CustomHomepageContent />

:point_up: and that’s all, it just needs a single line calling for your component :tada:

Screenshot 2023-06-13 at 1.06.13 PM
Screenshot 2023-06-13 at 1.06.13 PM1418×226 26.4 KB

This document is version controlled - suggest changes on github.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-25T10:10:45Z

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47 Likes
14

Hi @awesomerobot,

Thanks for the explanation. I tried the steps you suggested but the after_header I implemented is still showing in the post detail pages. Can you recommend how I can fix this to show only on my home page?

1 Like
15

Hi @Cornelius, is it alright to view your code?

2 Likes
16

It would be great to rewrite this for modern use of the filesystem rather than sticking everything in the header tags.

Most of these old guides for themes are out of date with your things are done now.

4 Likes
17

Yes, this was fairly outdated! I’ve updated it to reflect the structure of remote themes and our modern Ember components.

6 Likes
18

That’s awesome!

And that getter is the same thing as this http://ember-cli-page-object.js.org/docs/v1.11.x/api/getter.html? I know just enough to be dangerous. If it is the same, then I’ll edit the OP to link to it.

3 Likes
19

@awesomerobot Hi kris, I have installed discourse locally on my system. What is the right path to add these files in my local instance of discourse. I wanted to add a new theme-component in my local instance of discourse.

1 Like
20

You would create your theme component and install it through the ux.

Install a theme or theme component

Install the Discourse Theme CLI console app to help you build themes

4 Likes
21

If I build my homepage on top of the category view, I am consequentially still getting my custom content even if I go to /categories which is not the home URL. I want to limit this to just the root URL / which I believe is what the previous code was doing, but I wonder if defaultHomepage() should do that.

3 Likes
22

discovery.${defaultHomepage()} will match the route that is set as the landing route by the top-menu setting. It will match both the root URL / AND the specific route, like /categories.

In my experience there’s two complications when building a custom homepage based on defaultHomepage():

  • the route that it is build on is not available as a plain list view any longer
  • members can set their own default homepage in their interface settings. So one either needs to disable that feature or actually have a homepage concept that works on any of the top-menu routes

To only build a custom homepage on the root URL one can check for router.currentURL === '/'. By default, this only matches the root URL / and not the landing route set by the top-menu setting. However, there is logic now on the sidebar links that additionally aims to match a given URL to a route. So it won’t work on sidebar links by default. I just posted a topic on this: Can I have sidebar links that don’t resolve an url to a route?

In my understanding there’s currently no default way to build a custom homepage on the root URL without either targeting a route from the top-menu as well or running into issues with the sidebar. It would be great to have that option.

4 Likes
23

Right, it’s kind of a long-standing hack that / and the corresponding /route can render different content. We have a todo to

  1. Allow the homepage to be set independently of the top_menu setting
  2. Add a new stand-alone homepage template that can be customized without taking over an existing route

Custom homepages are a very common request at this point, so we could certainly use more flexibility here.

6 Likes