New to Discourse community platform. I want to learn as an admin how can I reply within a post under a topic?
For an example, there is an intro yourself post. That post has already been pinned. I added my intro under that “Intro post.” I want to pin my response so everyone can see, so they don’t need to scroll all the way to the bottom. Any tips?
I can’t see to find ‘pin’ under my admin wrench.
Thank you for helping out newbie.
Welcome @cathyjliu! 
If I understand you correctly you’d like to pin a post within a topic. At the moment, this is not possible by default. I’d imagine that you would need a custom plugin.
An alternative way to make a post stand out is to ‘Add Staff Colour’
This is found on the 
icon under a post along side like, bookmark etc
Although it does not ‘pin’ the post it makes it more visible.
Appreciated the tip! How do I get custom plugin? Meanwhile, I like your workaround of adding staff color.
Thank you!
If you have the knowledge you can create it yourself. Or else you will have to create a topic in marketplace
thank you for the info; will bookmark it and see if I have the resource or bandwidth to figure it out!
What happens is that when they go to the topic they will go to the first post that they have not seen, so they won’t need to scroll to your post if it’s the first one that they have not yet seen.
I assume you meant the user will click on the ‘last reply’. I can see that after I read your post… then found that last reply button… IMHO… that functionality isn’t intuitive for me.
hi @cathyjliu welcome to Meta 
this request confuses me because pinning puts topic posts (first posts) at the top of category topic list pages. the idea of pinning a post to me means it’s going to show up at the top of category pages for users. users can also unpin posts. if you mean to pin it as a banner do you really want your post at the top of every page? pinning doesn’t do anything within in a topic.
i feel like either staff color (or maybe even a staff notice with a link to a post?) is the way to accomplish what it sounds like you are wanting to achieve.
i think he means that when a person enters a topic, they automatically go to the first post they have not read yet. it does not always go to the top post if they have already been in the topic.
i use staff color, staff notices and pinned topics a lot on my forum. i cannot see how pinning will do what it seems you want.
are you wanting to pin a post to the top of a topic so it appears over the original post? or just under it? or do you mean pin it so that every time a user enters the topic it goes to your post?
from the sounds of what your goal is, my advice would be to have a separate introduction topic for staff only.
Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the confusion, but I will try to explain it. The intro post has already been pinned under the topic. It is a long post with near 40 replies. I want my reply (the one I introduced myself) to be pinned right under the original post. Does that make sense now?
what do you mean by pinned? do you mean the first post (original post)? pinning refers to making a topic post go to the top of a topic list page for users regardless of if it’s got the latest activity.
this is a pinned topic post (the first post in the topic). you can see the pin icon beside the topic title. pinning it puts it at the top of that category’s list of topics until the user unpins it, then it will fall down the list normally like an unpinned topic.
it sounds like you simply want to insert your post under the original post and you are using the term “pin” to mean insert under the first post. the topic (original) post is not pinned, it is simply the first post in the topic.
this is not possible to do in Discourse and i’m not even sure if it can be done with a plugin. but like @pfaffman says, this is somewhat counter-intuitive to how Discourse displays topics to users who enter the topic more than once. if they read the first post already (and any replies) putting your post there means they will not see it.
it may also be that there is translation language issue here and i am reading pinned while you are actually saying something else perhaps, like “sticky” or “insert”.
like i said earlier, my advice would be to simply make another introduction topic for Staff only in the same category. you can even put a staff notice over the top post in the introduction topic with a link to the staff introduction page.
That’s in the context of the category view.
I read this to mean the topic view. Pinning isn’t possible in the topic at present, but it’s a reasonably good fit for the behavior they’re describing.
yea i’m gathering that now. but the fact remains it will get bypassed by anyone who re-enters the topic with other replies they have seen (unless this behavior is suppressed i suppose).
it seems they are asking for a method to insert a post and reset the timeline.
i’m also trying to think of ways they can achieve what they want through existing functionality available to admins.
i’m just brainstorming here, but i wonder if there is a way to achieve something like what they’re asking using the post move / merge function to a new topic by copying the OP to a new one then posting under it and moving the other reply posts. 
aha i just did it using the post move to new topic functions.
i used selected the OP and moved it to a new topic. i posted a new post under it. then i went back to the old topic and moved the rest of the replies (without checking the chronological box) and moved them to the new topic and they are under my post reply to the OP.
i will take and post some screenshots on how to do this… but i will wait til Jammy replies 
That may be quite a noisy way to do it though, depending on how many posts you’re moving from one place to another and back (though doable).
There’s an open feature request on this as a similar thing has been asked for before What is best practice for "pinning" posts to a topic?
yes it’s a messy way to do it, but i’m also not sure how often the OP would need to do this. sounds like a rare occurance in this case. it does achieve sort of what they wanted but it still doesn’t account for the timeline issue. i suspect they want to lock the users to that post (by “pinning” it). interesting feature request. i took screenshots of how i did it and i can post them if @cathyjliu wants to know how.
I think in the feature request the post would stay in the right order, but a copy would also be pinned under the OP to emphasise it, a little like how Solved does with solutions inside the OP.
yea after reading that feature request topic, i can totally see an scenario need for this type of functionality now. the solved is a great example of how it copies the post, just in this case insert as another post instead of link box.
Very hacky suggestion, I’m not sure it would do the trick, but just in case:
Use the solved component, but make CSS rules to hide mentions of “solved” to prevent misleading users, as well as change (or hide) the icon to whatever would fit, and also hide the solve button from anyone but your staff.
I would also have suggested this as a solution.
But what if he needs the solved topic plugin in addition?
