How to make all users who sign up or accept in invite go to a specifed category(with post composer open)

Support
1

Hello,

Is there a way to make it so anyone who signs up for the first time (whether through the sign up process or by accepting an invite(even if it does not have the go to topic configured)) go to a specified category and have the post composer automatically open?

This would reduce the friction of new users posting introduction posts and increase community engagement.

How would I be able to achieve this? I already have several invite links made and there would not be a realistic way to change all to go-to topic settings in them(and that would not open the post composer either).

Thank you so much!

2

There’s no built-in way in Discourse to automatically send all first-time users (sign up or via invite) to a specific category and auto-open the composer.

Workarounds:

  1. You can nudge users to your introduction area by including a composer link in:
  • the Discobot welcome message
  • a global banner

See Creating a link to start a new topic with pre-filled information

Or:

  1. You can achieve this with the Custom Wizard plugin, configuring it to redirect new users to the composer in your chosen category when completing the onboarding wizard.
3

I wonder if this is possible in a Theme Component, to overwrite:

to redirect the user. But opening the composer automatically might be harder.

4

This is possible with the custom wizard plugin

5

Opening the composer itself isn’t the hard part - Discourse already exposes a first-class entry point for that.

You can redirect users to the /new-topic endpoint with query parameters, e.g.:

https://discourse.com/new-topic?
title=Shared%20from%20iOS
&category_id=19
&body=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com

This opens the new topic composer with fields prefilled (title, category, body) using simple query params — not post[...].

So the flow would be:

  • redirect after signup / invite acceptance
  • land on /new-topic?...
  • composer opens immediately with the desired category and content

This is the same mechanism used by iOS sharing and other integrations, so it’s already supported and stable.

The remaining question is where best to hook the redirect (invite accept vs first login), not whether the composer itself can be opened automatically.

6

I know that, but I didn’t exclude the possibility that the OP wanted to open the reply composer, not the topic composer. That’s why I suggested the composer service which IIRC has a method to open it.

If

is possible, perhaps a localstorage item can signal the opening of the composer. Hmm…

7

Yes - this could be cleanly implemented as a theme component.

For example, see:

The approach is:

  • redirect after activation / invite acceptance
  • set a one-shot signal (e.g. via localStorage)
  • a JS api-initializer in the theme component reads the signal
  • opens the composer via the composer service
  • clears the flag so it only runs once

This avoids overriding core templates and keeps the solution upgrade-safe and frontend-only.