Let me first say that I personally prefer using discourse forums above phpbb forums for a couple of reasons, mainly functionality related. On a phpbb forum I still sometimes have things like “Oh wait ! This guy actually did react on my post there 2 years ago.”
That being said, if I raise the question on a phpbb forum if they would like to switch to discourse, I often get a reaction like this:
is it me or every Discourse forum i’ve seen feels “messy” and hard to read? phpBB and similar forums may feel too “2000s”, but at least they work and the front-page being categories with a blurb about what the categories are all about (and category groups in case there are many of them) makes it much easier to go and read a forum. Also all the widgets and trinkets and everything that seems to be added with pages full of little user icons, buttons, etc make it feel too busy - something that is worsened by the minimal (to no) separation of different posts (and the “replies” tab which is really confusing since by clicking it you see the same stuff twice if all replies are to the main or to few posts). In ‘regular’ forums, quotting, having a grid and somtimes even alternating background colors for different replies help.
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and is +1 by 35 people, so I guess many people feel this way. For me, it is not about the style or look that makes discourse good, it is about the features such as being able to quickly see all the latest or unread post, the markdown editor, the ability to like a post, the ability to tag someone, the ability to summarize a topic, the good search functionality, the mathjax support as plugin etc. etc.
All those things are for me much more important then how discourse actually look. So I was wondering, would it be possible to make discourse look more like a phpbb forum using a plugin ? It is of course not necesarry to remove features that discourse have to make it more look like phpbb, but I’m more thinking about the category page, and just how posts are displayed.
You’ll have to be a lot more specific about what you want, if as stated in the above quote you want the homepage to be the categories page simply edit the topnav site setting to put categories first.
I second this. I’ve done just that and combined with fixed category order and tweaking the amount of featured topics it makes a big difference, and afterwards you only need to tweak the css a bit to suit your taste.
I’d also like to point out that while I agree that the Discourse default layout is not without it’s faults, the way phpBB presents itself (particularly in combination with how people split it into a million categories) has been broken from the beginning and for so long that people simply have gotten used to it.
I’m actually surprised it has taken this long for someone (such as Discourse team) to actually do something about it.
FWIW, as it pretty much boils down to which one you prefer to customize, after toying around with it for a couple of weeks I’ve found Discourse to be way less off putting and much more practical than it seems.
I think it is mostly that people find discourse to busy looking. But I’m glad seeing this minimal discourse discussion etc.
You’ll have to be a lot more specific about what you want, if as stated in the above quote you want the homepage to be the categories page simply edit the topnav site setting to put categories first.
I mean simply let discourse look just like a phpbb forum with more functionality. But I will play around with some CSS and see what I can get.
Well, phpBB is very busy itself so this is a rather conflicted statement.. “Please make Discourse look like this other very busy, confusing thing”. Better to just focus on simplification: voting the least popular and least used UI elements off the island as we did with stars and starring.
Well, I totally agree that phpBB is confusing and lacks many features, and doesn’t look as stylish as discourse. I do prefer discourse in every way above phpBB. But if forums where I’m active only want to switch to discourse, if it looks more like it, well… why not make some extension where discourse look more like phpBB ?
I understand that the discourse team doesn’t feel like doing this, but I was wondering if it is possible, I’m trying to achieve it with CSS, it is kind of hard, I’m not sure if I will succeed, I will post it if I have something.
Maybe I should note, that only after I really began to look at phpBB, when trying to copy that style for discourse, I noticed how much strange design things there are. Like every post must have a title, but nobody cares to give the post a title, so at every post you have: “Re: Topic Title”. I honestly just hadn’t noticed that, I think people reading the internet get trained just ignoring things that are not interesting, like an advertisement banner etc.
오래된 주제에 다시 글을 올려 죄송합니다. 하지만 이 주제에 정말 관심이 있고, 이 토론이 좋은 출발점이 될 것 같아서요.
‘올드스쿨’ 포럼에 더 가깝도록 수정된 Discourse 포럼의 좋은 예시가 있는지 알고 계신 분 계신가요?
솔직히 말씀드리면, 저는 주로 옛날 GameFAQs 포럼의 스타일링을 재현하는 데 관심이 있습니다. 예전 모습과 이를 흉내 내기 위한 CSS가 supposedly 포함된 예시를 이 링크에서 볼 수 있습니다: Classic GameFAQs Boards: gfaqs8 CSS
아마도 이것은 실제로 "phpBB"는 아닐 것 같지만, 만약 Discourse를 이런 모습으로 만들 수 있다면 phpBB를 구현하기 위한 좋은 기반이 될 거라고 생각합니다. 제가 눈에 띄는 특정 요소들은 다음과 같습니다.
Discourse 페이지의 많은 요소들을 둘러싸고 있는 넓은 빈 공간과 달리, 컴팩트한 토픽 목록과 게시글 목록
사용자가 아바타를 비활성화할 수 있는 기능
페이지 주위에 거의 없거나, 있다면 아주 적은 아이콘이나 그래픽 버튼, 요소
페이지에 플로팅 요소가 없고, 더 단순한 “렌더링된 HTML” 스타일의 정적인 요소가 훨씬 많음
이러한 것들을 구현한 Discourse 포럼의 예시를 아시는 분이 있다면 공유해 주시면 좋겠습니다. 저는 웹 개발자가 아니어서 이런 것을 직접 구현하기 위해 어디서 시작해야 할지 파악하는 데 많은 노력이 필요합니다. 링크된 웹사이트의 예시 CSS가 있더라도, 모든 것이 깨지지 않도록 Discourse 포럼에 어떻게 적용해야 할지 확신이 서지 않습니다.
