The discussion is about customizing the landing page of a Discourse forum. Multiple users suggest plugins and theme components as an alternative to directly changing Discourse code. A few users share examples of plugins they have used like Versatile Banner and Topic List Previews to add custom content to their landing page. The OP asks for plugin suggestions and is provided options. Another user asks about uploading a completely custom landing page and is advised on overriding the default category page template to achieve that.
I have seen some forums using custom designs on the landing page of their discourse forum. Can this be achieved without a need to change code in discourse github.
I want to add a banner image and some text above latest topics list of the landing page.
Reference LInks
Yes, we strongly recommend against changing Discourse’s source as it makes upgrades much more difficult and prone to breaking. Themes, theme components, and plugins should be utilized instead.
There are some existing Customization > Theme component that may work, or can at least serve as examples if you want to develop your own.
Versatile Banner might work for you as-is or with some minor adjustment.
Showcased Categories Theme Component is a good general example of how to show custom content on the homepage.
We only use some plugins and CSS on Blender Artists, no custom HTML.
Great !!! Could you suggest some of the plugins that you are using.
Highly recommend Versatile Banner, it’s extremely simple, easy to use, and fairly flexible.
I only used it on a small side project of mine for an investing forum site, but so far like the results.
I paired it with a linked component to create area/zone links around each of the 3 categories, works well. Just had to create a new component, insert code into the Header, and done.
The most important one for us is Topic List Previews - it handles the featured images row at the top of the page and our galleries etc.
Howdy @awesomerobot 
Our team launched a new home page yesterday to better direct our community to resolutions (https://forum.webflow.com/), however in order to have a fully custom home page we had to switch our Discourse instance to discourse.webflow.com.
We were wondering if there’s any way to upload a completely custom home page experience because we’d much rather this all live within one subdomain. Thank you so much for your help! 
It is possible, but can be a little complex depending on what you’re trying to do. The way we most often approach this is by overriding the template for the default category page in a theme (category boxes with subcategories in your case)… and then setting that as the homepage (controlled by top_menu in Discourse’s admin settings). That template is https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/templates/components/categories-boxes.hbs
Template overrides are covered in the advanced section of Developing Discourse Themes & Theme Components
Thank you so much, @awesomerobot!!! We’re going to explore this option and super appreciate your response, Kris
