For the past few months, we have been hard at work on our newest Discourse theme, Horizon, and today we’re excited to share our work with you and invite you to try Horizon in your community.
In this topic, we’ll share about Horizon and walk you through installation.
All about Horizon
Horizon is a simple, beautiful theme designed to provide a great user experience for communities without extra effort on the admin’s part. The name reflects our hope that this theme expresses a more expansive vision for who can use Discourse and how Discourse communities can look.
Light mode
Dark mode
Why did we build Horizon?
We built Horizon to make it easier for anyone to start a Discourse community and proudly share it with their members.
In speaking with Discourse admins, we’ve learned that one of the most important parts of starting a community is modifying its appearance to make sure it’s a welcoming, enjoyable space for community members. Horizon makes it possible to have a great looking community without additional effort or customization.
Who is Horizon for?
Horizon is designed for communities that don’t have the expertise or resources to customize Discourse’s appearance.
We are proud of how flexible and customizable Discourse is — and that’s not changing! But we believe that more Discourse in the world is a good thing, and that the best way for us to do that is by making it easier for less tech-savvy communities to thrive with our product.
What makes Horizon special?
Where Default is a blank slate, Horizon has opinions. It values spaciousness, simplicity, and modern design aesthetics.
To see the difference, use the theme toggle at bottom of the sidebar here on Meta to switch to Horizon:
Here’s some of what you’ll notice that’s different about Horizon:
- Less information density. The most noticeable feature of Horizon is the topic card, which is slimmed down from the standard table view to make it feel more approachable and simple. Certain information, like extensive details about topic participants, tags, and assigned users, are not visible.
- Larger text and more space. Beyond the topic card, we’ve brought a greater degree of space into Horizon by increasing base font sizes in the reading area and incorporating a full-width structure.
- Built to be used as-is. Communities that want extensive control over the site appearance or have very particular design requirements can and should continue to work off of our Default theme or create their own theme to best serve their needs. While we’ve tested Horizon against the most popular official theme components and found only minor incompatibilities, we do not recommend adding unofficial components or other custom code to Horizon.
Using Horizon
You can enable Horizon for your members in just a few steps:
- Go to the
Admin area, go to the Appearance section, and click Themes & components. - Find the Horizon theme card, click the … button, and select Set as active to make Horizon your community’s new default theme. (You may need to refresh your screen to see this change take place.)
You may optionally enable any of the new color palettes, which are built specifically to work well with Horizon.
Instructions on configuring color palettes.
- Click Color palettes in the admin sidebar.
- Select the desired color palette (e.g., Horizon).
- Check the Color palette can be selected by users setting, and then click the check mark to confirm.
- Repeat steps 2-3 for any palettes you want to use.
After refreshing, you’ll see a paintbrush in the bottom of the sidebar. You can click that to choose your specific color palette for Horizon (shown in the screenshot above). Your members can do the same to choose between any palettes you’ve enabled. To set the new default palette for Horizon (i.e. how Horizon looks before members have made any changes and for anonymous visitors):
- Go to Themes & components in the admin area.
- Find the Horizon card and click Edit.
- Change the Color Palette field to your desired default.
What’s next for Horizon
We’re just getting started! We’ve worked hard on this first version of the theme, but expect to continue investing in Horizon and improving it over time. We’ll actively seek feedback from sites that use Horizon in order to keep making it better, and hope one day soon to make it the default theme that ships with Discourse sites.
Thank you
We are so grateful to everyone who supported Horizon (and the Discourse team!) by testing Horizon out here on Meta or by participating in our beta testing. This feedback was invaluable in helping us find bugs, make adjustments, and polish the overall experience of Discourse on this theme. Thank you so much for your time, feedback, and support!