In a Support category discussion titled How to change the topic excerpt from the first post to the last post?, hoangviet asks how to display the last post’s excerpt instead of the first on the homepage — to make the forum feel “newer” with each reply. Canapin clarifies this isn’t theme-related and explains that only the first post’s excerpt is stored in the database, making this change non-trivial and likely requiring a plugin. hoangviet reiterates the value of freshness, aligning with dynamic avatars. Jagster cautions that last-post excerpts might show unhelpful content like “me too.” hoangviet responds that risk is inherent in innovation, especially in marketing. gassim supports the idea, sharing a similar request here, noting their use case involves learner discussions where the first post is a static prompt — updating excerpts with the latest reply keeps engagement alive and avoids repetition. They note their community of 1627+ posts has never had a “me too” reply, reinforcing the value of this feature for dynamic, educational forums. The thread ends with encouragement for hoangviet’s project.
At this theme: Fully Theme
On mobile and desktop homepages. How Change the topic description from the first post to the last post. Thank you!
The purpose of this is to make the forum’s homepage newer when there is a user reply, the forum page will not be old.
Hi!
This is not related to Fully theme 
I think it comes from Topic List Excerpts, which has no setting to show excerpts from the last post.
Only the first post of topics have their excerpt saved in the database (in the topics table), and I believe changing this behavior would require a plugin and be non-trivial work.
If the Excerpts of the topic is the last post. Then the forum will look very new. This matches the new avatar image displayed on the forum homepage.
Very new look is a synonym to unfamiliar. What if the last post on a topic is something like ”me too”?
@Jagster
It’s a mindset about doing business. I am a marketer, and I understand that innovation and change come with risks, but risks create opportunities for growth.
I think this could be helpful in some cases as well… depends on the discussions being posted I guess.
I’d actually requested something similar here:
In our use case when I’d asked about this feature above, the first post is simply a discussion prompt so having that visible all the time is like you said becomes a bit “old”. We thought it will also encourage moderators/instructors to keep updating the post by including a summary every now and then and maybe adding more questions so the discussion seems “new” for every new learner and it’s not the same first topic post that the hundreds of learners have answered before rather it’s a continuous discussion so that even though many answered before there is still engagement and “change”.
I would like to add that it has been about two years where we’ve not had a single “me too” post out of maybe more than a total of 1627 posts and that’s because these topic posts in the category where we’d wanted to activate this setting is for discussions where learners are responding to prompts from the lessons they are taking.
Good luck @hoangviet with your marketing project!
