Only allow link sharing?

Support
1

Hi there

I want to create a Discourse backed forum where the original post in a topic can ONLY be a link to a website. Is there a way to do that?

Thanks!

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2

Where there is a will there is a way, but there isn’t an obvious technical one. I’d recommend just making that a community norm. You can have a per category topic template that could tell users to include only a URL.

A URL is hardly civilized discussion. You’d need a plugin to enforce it.

Edit: boy, was I wrong!

3

I want a forum where each thread represents a link to an article and we have civilised discourse about it (sort of like hacker news). If I’m trying to put a square peg in a round hole then happy to look at another solution. Also happy to look at plugins (or write a plugin!) but also don’t want to try to force something unintended.

As you may have guessed I am a complete discourse newbie.

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4

I’m not quite sure. AMaybe fit?

https://meta.discourse.org/t/links-category-for-discourse/43532

Perhaps the plugin can be slightly modified.

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5

Will give it a try. Thank you!

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6

You can experiment with simple solution.

Add this CSS:

div#reply-control.topic .d-editor {
    display: none;

It will hide the text-area only in the topic creation composer. Then change the text (Admin > Customize > Text Content) in the title to say “paste a link here”.

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