[Paid] Discoure Community Platform - development for v2

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Hi — I’m looking for an experienced Discourse developer to help get my community platform ready for launch. The instance is already live and has a ‘custom theme’ in place (design layer only, implemented via the Discourse admin panel (Head, CSS/JS tabs & .Nav injection for colours, fonts and navigation bar) - It’s not a structured theme component as such - this isn’t a ground-up build — it’s about getting the details right.

Happy to receive fixed price proposals — payment structured across milestones.

Here’s what I need:

The existing theme There’s already a custom theme in place, although its not really a true ‘theme’, its design-layer only (colours, fonts, nav injection via JS). The nav & light/dark toggle (token sets) has survived the last two updates without issues.The ask here is simply a quick audit to confirm consistent rendering across all page types and both modes, fix any gaps where elements fall back to Discourse defaults, and swap in the final logo asset (provided). Not a rewrite — more a QA pass and tidy up.

Member portal page I want a custom profile page that shows the member’s type (Owner, Member, or Dealer), their vehicle, a verified status pill, and a language selector. The resource links shown on the page need to be conditional — owners see different tools to prospective members, for example. I’ll provide a full interactive mockup showing both light and dark states and all member type views.

The page also needs a Connected Accounts panel where members can authenticate via Discord and Facebook OAuth. On successful auth, their platform ID and username get written back to Supabase (credentials and schema provided). I have the OAuth apps set up — I just need the Discourse-side component and the callback logic wired up cleanly.

Language and translation The community is international so this matters. When a member selects their preferred language (English, Thai, Czech, Dutch, German, NZ English), I want the full Discourse UI to switch — menus, notifications, system messages, everything. On first visit, detect their country from IP and prompt them to confirm. I also need the Discourse Translator plugin installed and configured with a DeepL API key (provided), with per-post translate buttons active and translations cached against post ID to keep API costs down. Static pages including the member portal (which needs to be accessible through the discourse native buttons too) need to render in the selected language too.

Trust levels, groups and Tally integration The category structure will be in place before you start. What I need is the trust level and group configuration wired up correctly — so that member types (Owner, Member, Dealer) are assigned on registration, groups map to the right category permissions, and any changes sync back to Supabase. I also need discourse_user_id and discourse_username exposed as URL parameters for embedded Tally forms so they can be captured as hidden prefill fields.

DVLA verification gate The owners-only category needs to be gated behind vehicle verification. When an unverified member tries to access it, they see a prompt to enter their registration number. I’m building the verification endpoint myself (Cloud Run, REST — fully documented and provided) so your scope here is purely the Discourse theme component: the gated landing screen, the VRM input form, and the success/error states. I need someone who’s comfortable with Discourse’s Ember-based theme component JS for this part specifically.

XCombo topic One more component — a single Discourse topic that serves as both a reference and a discussion space for a data set I maintain. The first post is pinned and contains an embedded search widget (filters in real time from a Supabase table), an “Email me the full list” button (calls a provided endpoint, Resend delivers a PDF to the member’s registered address), and a link anchoring down to the open discussion thread below. Again, the search logic, endpoint, and Resend integration are all provided — you’re wiring the Discourse-side container only. This also gives you a sense of the full member flow: portal → resource link → topic → search → email.

I’ll provide all assets, credentials, Supabase access, and documentation on award. Happy to walk through it if needed. Please let me know your experience with OAuth integrations in Discourse specifically, and whether you’ve worked with Ember-based theme components before.

Many thanks

Edited for clarity

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Hi @larrybmb

This isn’t really a small project and that header replacement configuration sounds fragile based on the description. you’re going to want to make sure your forum can be updated with latest Discourse updates (with minimal effort or fixes).

so is that 250 per payment?

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Per milestone or per hour?

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Hi Lilly, thanks for your quick response — to clarify: $250 was the starting point for total project budget but I’m happy to be flexible on budget for the right person — scope is fairly well defined so open to a fixed price proposal with a payment profile split across milestones if required.

On your point around header replacement - I’m not asking for any structural work - the existing theme isn’t replacing any core Discourse templates. It’s a theme component injecting a custom nav via JS, hooking into discourse:ready and page change events. I can confirm that it works, and has survived at least the previous two discourse updates. The ask is simply to confirm it renders correctly across all page types and fix any gaps. Should be update-safe as-is but happy for that to be reviewed as part of M1.

Hope that helps?

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Hi Richard, thanks for your quick response — to clarify: $250 was the starting point for total project budget but I’m happy to be flexible on budget for the right person — scope is fairly well defined so open to a fixed price proposal with a payment profile split across milestones if required.

Hope that helps?

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It’s at least a $2500 job, but probably twice that. It’s probably $500 just to figure out what you want your existing theme to do and rewrite it according to discourse standards.

Best of luck.

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Hi Jay — for clarity, I’m not asking for an existing theme rewrite. I’m fairly happy with my existing theme files (they are more akin to design files than actual theme changes, and they’ll be provided as a reference) — I’m sure it will hold up, but the main ask is the development of the member profile page and related flows. The theme piece was more “have a quick look, identify any UI gaps and feed back” — not a rewrite at all.

Appreciate the starting budget may be low for many — it was intended as a starting point for negotiation. Happy to share the full spec, with the technical details and files with anyone interested - tried to capture that in the post.

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Many thanks for your comments everyone - much appreciated. I have edited my post based on comments and to provide some clarity.

Namely:

the existing theme files are design-layer only (colours, fonts, nav injection) — not structural template overrides. No core Discourse templates have been modified. I’m not asking for any structural changes, more a have a quick look, identify any UI gaps and feed back.

My main ask is the development of the member profile page and related flows - happy for fixed price proposals to be put forward by interested parties - appreciating that the starting point put forward previously may have been low - so have removed it.

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Without a clear scope of work this is a bit too loose ended to give a fixed price, but reading the comments I would give it at least $5000-8000 range. Maybe lower if we can agree on a spec but this is significantly more than your offer of $250. My contact information is on my bio of You’d like to discuss more.

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Hi @larrybmb, I’ve sent you a PM with a detailed feasibility review and some clarification questions around scope and implementation assumptions. Happy to discuss further once you’ve reviewed it.

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For clarity, I’m suggesting that core.scss, nav.scss, nav.js are not filenames I would expect in a Discourse theme or theme component, so the likelihood that what you’ve done will be hard to maintain or not work with the other things you’re asking for is very high. Saying that “No core Discourse templates have been modified” suggests that you didn’t follow Discourse programming standards.

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Thanks Jay, that’s genuinely useful feedback. The files were built by a contractor and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if they followed Discourse theme conventions properly. That’s partly why I want someone experienced to look at it. If a restructure into proper theme component format is needed, I’d want that flagged and scoped separately — not necessarily undertaken as part of this engagement as I appreciate it’s additional effort.

To clarify the implementation files were provided to me and I added them via the admin panel head, JS and CSS tabs — so no, I guess actually it isnt a structured theme component as such.

Appreciate the feedback

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But you don’t want to build on top of a broken foundation.

If that were the end of the job and you were a hobbyist, it would probably be OK.

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I don’t say this is the case here, but I’ve heard increasing cases of testimonies of developer asked to develop from or repair botched vibe-code written by so-called developers who probably don’t know much about code. Anyway, I’d be wary of that.

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@pfaffman

Thanks for the advice — happy to share the files privately if you’re interested in taking a look. Not a hobbyist - a start-up in an automotive niche - my back end pipelines are solid, and have undergone an architectural and security review. They’re hosted on GCP and the discourse instance is cloud-hosted on Hostinger.

Wouldn’t say I’m an expert developer, but I have self taught myself a lot over the last 10 years hence my asking for help here, and knowing when to outsouce.

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Thinking out loud for a second if I may. Do I actually need custom oauth for my use case?

The native connected accounts, if pulled into a the member profile page would work - if the copy could be tweaked? (E.g. want to know if Joe Bloggs in my community is the same jo bloggs that interacts with my Facebook community (I extract facebook_id through Facebook app developer) - so if this is the same identifier used (which I think it is?) it could work with some bespoke branding round it (so it looks an integrated part of the site?)

Would welcome thoughts