The discussion Pinned topics instead of latest showing on mobile revolves around the issue of pinned topics from 2022 appearing at the top of a forum’s mobile view, giving the impression that the forum is outdated. Ashanee17 initiated the discussion, seeking a solution to display the latest topics instead of pinned ones on mobile.
HAWK pointed out that the issue is due to the user being logged out, and Discourse displaying pinned topics until they are read. HAWK suggested either keeping the topics pinned if they are important or unpining them if not.
simon provided a solution to update the date of a topic by using the admin wrench icon and selecting “Change timestamp.” Alternatively, simon suggested hiding the dates of pinned topics using CSS.
nolo recommended using the Force Mobile Homepage component to set the mobile homepage to “Latest” and adjusting the navigation menu for better user experience.
Overall, the discussion provides various solutions to address the issue of pinned topics appearing on mobile, including updating topic dates, hiding dates using CSS, and using the Force Mobile Homepage component.
Hi,
So I am trying to do some customisation on the mobile view of our forum. So we’ve set the “Desktop category page style” in settings to be Categories and Latest Topics which works well. But on mobile, it doesn’t reflect this and we can set this anywhere in the settings?
At the moment on mobile, the topics on each board a very random. Some of them are old pinned topics and others are the latest. How do we change this, please?
I don’t think there is a way to have the categories and latest topics view on mobile due to screen real estate restrictions.
That screenshot of your mobile view is for a not logged in user, which means they are always going to see all the pinned topics at the top because in that state, Discourse doesn’t know whether or not they have read them. It will look different if you view it logged in.
Do you still have an issue to solve if you are logged in?
Hmm but this is the issue my client is having is the fact that signed out users are seeing these pinned topics from 2022 and they may think the forum is outdated.
What would be the solution here? Do we have to unpin these topics so that the signed out user sees the latest topics? Can we update the date of topic?
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When the user is logged in and clicks on those pinned topics and then comes back to homepage. The pinned topic is just greyed out. It doesn’t remove it completely.
The thing is that the person you are now logged in as has not read those pinned topics. They are designed to stay pinned until an individual reads them, at which point they become unpinned for that specific individual.
So either these topics are important enough that everyone needs to read them and that’s why they’re pinned, or they’re not in which case you unpin them and they will no longer sit above latest.
If they read the post it will become unpinned for them automatically.
If you log in and read the pinned posts, what do you then see on the home screen?
Also take a look at Force Mobile Homepage in case that is helpful.
I ran into this recently. The case was a forum with a bunch of pinned topics from 2021 that had also been closed. It’s clear that they want to keep the topics pinned, but seeing the old dates at the top of a topic list makes it look like the forum doesn’t get much activity.
Yes. As an admin user, go to the pinned topic and click the admin wrench icon that’s on the upper right of the page. Select “Change timestamp” from the dropdown menu. That will allow you to update the topic’s date.
Another way to deal with it would be to hide the dates of the pinned topics with CSS. Something like the following, added to your theme or a theme component should work:
.topic-list-item.pinned .activity.last {
display: none;
}
or to just target mobile devices:
.mobile-view .topic-list-item.pinned .activity.last {
display: none;
}
Yes, on mobile there’s only one template for the categories page and it shows categories with featured topics. I guess the easiest fix would be, as @HAWK mentioned already, to use the Force Mobile Homepage component and set the mobile homepage to “Latest”, that is the global list of latest topics.
Though if you do that I’d also recommend you adjust your navigation menu, so mobile users can navigate better between the topics list, categories and other pages. Right now you only have external links and categories on the menu:
It’s usually a clearer pattern to have main navigation items for the forum on top, and to wrap external links in a dedicated section. So there’s no surprise element for navigating away from the forum. Here’s an example from another Discourse community:
