Summary: Altering Discourse Main Page Style
john3 wants to change the main page style of their Discourse forum to a category-based layout, similar to https://community.smartthings.com. jomaxro suggests using the “desktop category page style” site setting, but john3 can’t find it in their settings.
jomaxro realizes that the setting was introduced in Discourse 1.7, but john3 is running 1.6.5. zogstrip and Mittineague try to help, but it appears that the setting doesn’t exist in 1.6.5.
Mittineague suggests upgrading to the latest version, but john3 claims to already be up-to-date. Mittineague explains that the latest version is 1.7.0beta7 and suggests either waiting for the stable version or testing the beta version on a staging install. john3 decides to wait for the stable version.
Hello,
recently I came across a forum (https://community.smartthings.com), quite old style i.e. main topics/thread and then users can create new topics in within that parent topic, but I find it more easy for users and want to apply this to my forum. Can anyone please tell me how can I achieve this interface?
You’re looking for the desktop category page style site setting, set to “Categories with Featured Topics”.
@jomaxro Thanks for the reply. I am unable to find this option in the settings.
Hmm, are you running the latest version of Discourse, or are you running version 1.6?
@jomaxro > Version v1.6.5 +3/1.6.6
OK, that’ll do it. This setting was implemented in 1.7. I don’t remember what the setting (if any) was called back in 1.6. Perhaps @zogstrip knows, he added the new settings.
I believe it was just called category page style. We added the desktop prefix because we’ll add a mobile specific site setting 
Easy to miss, but the “prefix” in zogstrip’s post is not in monospace. i.e. it is not part of the setting name.
What was said is "category page style" is now “desktop category page style” in prep for the coming “mobile category page style” setting.
Anyway, I have two localhost versions of Discourse, latest and 1.6.0beta9
The 1.6.0beta9 version does not have a “category page style” setting.
It does have category style, but that is bar, box, bullet.
It does have the newer “hybrid” categories page. but I could not find any setting.
Things have changed since that version so there very well could have been a setting that was there between then and now. (Or maybe “top menu” took “classic” ?)
In any case, rather than hunt down a setting that may or may not be there, why not upgrade to latest?
@Mittineague it says that I already up to date. Whenever, their is any update, I do install it.
Hmmm, must be a branch thing. (eg. stable ?)
The latest version is 1.7.0beta7
I have only localhost development installs and don’t have a live forum so I can afford to take chances that things might break.
I guess it’s a trade off. It takes a while for “cutting edge” changes to make it into the stable branch. so the choice is to either wait or be prepared for possible breakage.
Sounds risky I know. but I think if you visit here often you’ll see reports of problems (so you can hold off on upgrading for a while) and though there are a few tenacious bugs, major issues are resolved very quickly.
Of course the safest thing would be to have both live and staged installs so you could test on staging before swapping it to live.
alright thanks for the reply. I shall wait for the stable version : )
