Kanban Board

[Discourse]

	Summary	Kanban Board allows you to display and organise topics using a kanban board interface.
	Preview	Preview on Discourse Theme Creator
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-kanban-theme
	New to Discourse Themes?	Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

Install this theme component

As this is an official theme component maintained by the Discourse team, Support, Contribute > Bug, Contribute > UX, and Contribute > Feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate theme component tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

 Support  Bug  UX  Feature

Kanban boards have now been shipped as a core Discourse plugin, see Try out the new Boards feature for roadmaps and collaboration . This is available to our customers on our Business and Enterprise plans.

Hosted by us? Theme components are available to use on our Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Summary

The Kanban Board theme component transforms how you organize and visualize your forum topics. It provides a drag-and-drop interface that lets you move topics between different columns representing categories, tags, or user assignments, making it ideal for project management, workflow visualization, and content organization.

Features

Multiple organization modes

The Kanban Board offers three different modes to organize your topics:

1. Categories mode: Organize topics by their assigned categories
2. Tags mode: Organize topics by their assigned tags
3. Assignment mode: Organize topics by the users they’re assigned to

You can drag topics between lists to automatically change the corresponding attributes:

Performance optimized

Lists are “lazy-loaded,” which means the component only loads content as needed. This ensures reasonable performance even when dealing with large numbers of categories or topics.

Setup and configuration

Default board mode selection

The default board mode will be automatically determined using these criteria:

• If this is the top level, use categories mode
• If this is a category, and there are sub-categories, use categories mode
• Otherwise, use tags mode. (Lists built from ‘top tags’ list)

Changing the board mode

You can change the board mode using the filter button on the left, and configuration changes will be reflected in the URL. Users can bookmark their favorite configuration in their browser.

Settings

Site administrators can customize the default settings of the theme component through the theme’s settings:

Summary

Setting	Description
Display categories	A list of categories where the “Board” button should appear. If left blank, it will be shown everywhere. For subcategories, don’t include parent slug. Use @ to denote the top level view.
Default modes	Override the default board mode for each category. Use the syntax category:mode:params. For example, support:assigned:david,sam,joffrey. Use @ in place of category to denote the top level view (e.g. @:tags:todo,done). Use @untagged to display an untagged column.
Default view	A list of categories where the “Board” is the default view. (Note: Does not yet support the top level default view)
Require confirmation	Display a confirmation modal before making changes to a topic’s tags/category
Show tags	Show tags on topic cards
Card style	Determine the visual style of topic cards (currently “detailed” is available)
Show topic thumbnail	Display the topic thumbnail at the bottom of the card
Show activity indicators	Display an indicator of a card’s activity. Different styles will be applied if the topic has been bumped more than 7 days ago or more than 20 days ago

Defaults for each setting are shown below:

Text customizations

Administrators can customize the text labels used throughout the Kanban board interface. The following text elements can be customized:

Summary

Translation	Default	Description
no_topics	no topics	Displayed when a column has no topics
confirm_change_tags	Remove ‘#%{remove}’ and add ‘#%{add}’ to ‘%{title}’?	Confirmation message when changing tags
confirm_close	Close topic ‘%{title}’?	Confirmation when closing a topic
confirm_open	Reopen topic ‘%{title}’?	Confirmation when reopening a topic
confirm_change_category	Move topic ‘%{title}’?	Confirmation when changing a topic’s category
menu_label	Board	Text for the board navigation menu item
copy_link	Copy link to clipboard	Tooltip for copying a link
configure	Configure kanban board	Text for configuration button
fullscreen	Toggle fullscreen	Text for fullscreen toggle button
no_lists	No Kanban lists configured…	Shown when no lists are configured
controls	Kanban Board Controls	Header for controls section
last_post_by	Last post by	Label for last poster information
modal.title	Configure Kanban	Title of configuration modal
modal.tags_placeholder	Tags to display…	Placeholder for tags input field
modal.categories_placeholder	Categories to display…	Placeholder for categories input field
modal.usernames_placeholder	Users to display…	Placeholder for users input field
modal.apply	Apply	Text for apply button
modal.mode	Board Mode	Label for board mode selector
modal.lists	Lists	Label for lists configuration section

Tips for effective use

Setting up tag columns

For the most intuitive setup in tags mode, organize your tags in a tag group with “only one tag from this group” enabled. This ensures topics can only have one status tag, making the kanban board function like a traditional workflow board.

Controlling column order in tags mode

You can specify the exact order of columns using the default modes setting. For example, specifying roadmap:tags:discovery,design,build,testing will display columns in that specific order:

Empowering your users

As the mechanism for moving topics between kanban columns is by changing the tag, you have to ensure that your target users can actually do this. Options:

1. Ensure your target users are @staff, @trust_level_4, or category moderators
2. Alter the post edit time site settings (this allows users to be able to change the title / tags for their own topics for a much longer time)
3. Make all the topics wikis (they will need to edit the wiki to change the tag though, which isn’t great)

Frequently asked questions

Can I use the kanban board on mobile devices?

The drag-and-drop functionality currently doesn’t work on mobile devices because they don’t support HTML5 drag and drop. You can still view the board on mobile, but you won’t be able to move cards between columns.

Why does the board tab disappear after I set it up?

If the board tab disappears after initial configuration, you may need to ensure you’ve correctly entered the category names in the theme settings. Be sure to use the exact category slug (with underscores rather than dashes if applicable) and configure both parent categories and subcategories separately.

How do I limit which tags are shown site-wide?

You can configure which tags appear in the tags mode using the default modes setting. Specify exactly which tags should appear as columns to prevent all tags from showing up.

How do I change the card appearance?

You can customize the appearance of cards using several settings:

• Use the “Card style” setting to select the display format
• Enable or disable tags on cards with the “Show tags” option
• Add thumbnails to cards with “Show topic thumbnail” setting
• Add visual activity indicators with “Show activity indicators” setting

pr-welcome features:

• make the lists more configurable. e.g. allow administrators to define a combination of assignment, tags, and categories in one display

• Add support for dragging cards on mobile devices. Unfortunately, they don’t support html drag and drop

Last edited by @martin 2026-09-02T07:13:05Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[satonotdead]

This plugin was improved a lot, thanks to the Core Team for getting into this!

I’d like to suggest adding an option to always display a specific pinned topic at the top of the Kanban table.

This would help ensure important information (how to use 'support') stays visible to all users, even when using the Kanban view.

[ChrisBeach (Chris)]

보드에서 카테고리 대신 태그를 사용하는 경우, “기본 모드” 설정은 무엇이어야 하는지 설명해 주실 수 있을까요?

다음은 문서에서 가져온 내용인데, 명확하지 않습니다:

@Discourse

카테고리별 기본 보드 모드를 재정의합니다. category:mode:params 문법을 사용합니다. 예를 들어, support:assigned:david,sam,joffrey. 최상위 뷰를 나타내려면 @를 사용합니다. 태그가 없는 열을 표시하려면 @untagged를 사용합니다.

요약하면, #todo와 #done 두 개의 태그를 가지고 있으며, 모든 카테고리의 게시물 중 이 두 태그 중 하나를 가진 게시물을 표시하는 카나반 보드를 만들고 싶습니다.

[Moin]

@:tags:todo,done이 원하는 기능을 수행할 것 같습니다

[ChrisBeach (Chris)]

성공적으로 작동했습니다! @Moin 감사합니다

수정: OP의 문서를 업데이트하여 이 부분을 더 명확히 했습니다

[ShizukuYae]

안녕하세요,

플러그인에 대한 훌륭한 작업을 해주셔서 감사합니다.

현재 태그 모드에서 설정을 통해 카테고리에서만 카드를 표시하고 하위 카테고리는 표시하지 않는 방법이 있을까요?

[Lew_Grothe]

Horizon 테마로의 도입을 검토하기 시작했습니다. Kanban 테마의 호환성에 대해 혹시 아는 분이 계신가요? 목록에 Kanban이 없고, Horizon이 매우 강경한 입장을 가지고 있어 새로운 UI를 합리적으로 처리하기가 어려울 것 같다는 느낌을 받고 있습니다.

호환이 안 된다면, Kanban 컴포넌트를 Horizon과 함께 작동할 수 있도록 포크하는 방법이 있을까요?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

호라이즌과 함께 꽤 잘 작동할 것입니다.

[Lew_Grothe]

개발 머신에서 Horizon을 실행해 봤는데, Kanban이 전혀 작동하지 않습니다. 몇 개 버전 전의 기본 테마에서는 잘 작동했는데요. 아마 관리자 설정 문제인 것 같지만, 혹시 모르니 여쭤봅니다…

더 자세히 확인해 보겠습니다…

[Arkshine]

직접 시도해 보니 제 환경에서는 정상적으로 작동합니다.
확인해 볼 수 있는 몇 가지 사항이 있습니다:

• 해당 컴포넌트가 테마에 연결되어 있나요?
• 브라우저 콘솔에 오류가 표시되나요?

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

@mcwumbly

Horizon과 함께 꽤 잘 작동할 것입니다.

저도 Horizon과 함께 꽤 만족스럽게 사용하고 있습니다.

다만, Kanban 보드를 더 넓게 보기 위해 Horizon은 중앙 부분이 가로로 다소 좁아서 약간의 조정이 필요했던 것으로 기억합니다. 제가 사용한 CSS는 다음과 같습니다:

// Allows Kanban view to take up whole width of main container and controls the column width
@media (min-width: 40rem) {
    body.kanban-active:not(.has-full-page-chat,.wizard) #main-outlet-wrapper #main-outlet>*:not(.experimental-screen,.activate-account) {
        max-width: none;
    }
}
.discourse-kanban-container .discourse-kanban-list {
    width: 350px;
}