News Plugin 📰

The News Plugin adds a new “News” route to your forum. The latest topics in a category(s) (or from an RSS feed) are displayed in a large, news-like format, with an optional sidebar with a topic list. It adds a link to the News route in the header bar.

It is inspired by the Elektronauts news feed.

:page_facing_up: Get the code

:bug: Report a bug

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  • Not sure how to install a plugin? Follow the steps here.

  • Make sure you check out all the site settings for this plugin by searching for “News” in your admin settings.

59 Likes

I just tried the demo site and got an error stating that you can’t view the News feed without logging in. Is that by design?

5 Likes

It’s the plugin I’ve always wanted :grinning:

Can comments be added?

6 Likes

Originally yes, but not for the public version. I’ve fixed that. Thanks!

Yes, but it would require a fair bit more work. Happy to do this as a paid job.

11 Likes

Amazing plugin. I have more ideas to discuss with Angus to make it even better.

7 Likes

@angus awesome plugin, thank you!

Would it be possible to display topics in “News” by a tag(s) rather than a category? In my forum, would be great if users could post topics in any category and a “news” tag, which then aggregate all of those topics to a single News feed (regardless of category).

9 Likes

Hey @angus, great plugin! My community also enjoys the Topic List Preview, so thank you for that!

I made some quick mockup to see if it’s possible in future releases of News plugin to have some layout and posts options:

  • To have featured topic on top, large
  • Choose a number of columns for topics after that
  • To add byline, date


I like suggested idea to display tagged topics on the News page.

I hope the development of this plugin can help communities to move from Wordpress or using two platforms into one. This type of CSMish approach will do for us. We have reviews and some articles which we will like to present in a different way than standard Discourse posts. I imagine using the News page as the front page of the website. Thanks again!

14 Likes

Yes, this is possible, but I won’t be able to fit it in as an open source task for a while.

This is great! Thanks for that design inspiration. I’m may well get to this one soonish given it’s mostly style change :+1:

11 Likes

Hi, this is an interesting plugin. I want to confirm something before I install and rebuild my instance.

My discourse instance is set to private, but once in a while I also want to write public content, something like a blog page, that people can see it without logging in. Will this plugin allow me to do such things?

3 Likes

FYI I’m nearly ready to release a new feature for the ‘tiles’ view in Topic List Previews that doubles the width of ‘featured’ items so they take up 2 columns instead of 1.

update:this was implemented.

4 Likes

Suggestion: Would be great if we could select multiple categories to include in the news feed.

1 Like

I’m just getting a 500 internal server error when i visit whatever category I apply this to. I’ve followed the directions and have Topic List Previews installed (and working on another category), but this won’t work. Here’s a photo:

image

2 Likes

Great plugin thanx a lot.
Can we get full width for news page or it is narrowed with propose.

2 Likes

Not currently, no. If your site is private guests will not be able to access /news.

Great suggestion. I’ve scheduled this in for early May: https://discourse.angusmcleod.com.au/t/news-plugin-select-multiple-categories-to-include-in-the-news-feed/832

@rioforce Are you still experiencing this issue? if so can you check your /logs to see if there’s anything related to this plugin? Thanks.

It’s narrowed on purpose. You could change this via a css rule in a theme.


Note, the topic list headers seemed to have creeped back into this plugin, I’ll be removing them on Friday.

1 Like

I’m probably doing something very wrong to don’t get what I want, but… how can I change the “News” for an icon?
I trying doing this through CSS/Header, it “works” (icon is clickable and redirects to the news page), but instead of replacing the “News” it creates the icon in the upper left corner of the page…
<a class="widget-link header-nav-link" href="/news" title="News"><img alt="" src="/uploads/default/original/1X/26a6ef477d2310aea094143ee736c9ba959b1f6e.png" title="News" width="32" height="32"></a>

1 Like

Hey, thanks for giving the plugin a shot :slight_smile:

I’ve added a setting for a news “icon”. It supports fontawesome classes or image urls.

https://github.com/angusmcleod/discourse-news/commit/c4e32499b8bf4c43633baad8ceffbe9fbcb6233b

Example: https://discourse.angusmcleod.com.au

5 Likes

Hey, thank you!!
I’m working in some tests on migrating a phpbb forum to Discourse and really like your plugin. Thanks for implementing an icon option so fast :blue_heart:

3 Likes

Hello, how can i limit word news in here?

And How can show category menu in new page?

Thank you!

2 Likes

Hi All,

We are willing to sponsor a feature of the news plugin. The Feature we would like to add to it is :

  • 1 Add the ability to use RSS feeds as a source for the “News” page

Would they be other people willing to sponsor feature of the news plugin for example :

  • 2 add the ability to filter those news by catégorie, or type or key words
  • 3 Develop the design to it to have the ability to have 1 feature news

Other ideas ? features ?

Best,

7 Likes

@Jeremie_Leroy Thanks!

Jeremie reached out to me about sponsoring the RSS feed feature and I suggested there may be some others interested in upgrading this plugin.

If others are interested in using this plugin, but need a few tweaks, now’s the chance to join a co-sponsored effort to make that happen.

8 Likes