Removing support for "template overrides" and mobile-specific templates

[david (David Taylor)]

In the past, you could override the .hbs template for and Discourse Route or Component by adding an identically named file in the templates/ directory of your theme and plugin. This was very powerful, but also came with significant maintainability issues.

Therefore, we’ve been recommending against template overrides over the last few years, and officially deprecated them in November 2024. Nowadays, the better solution is to use Wrapper Plugin Outlets to render content in place of core content.

This month (March 2025) we will be introducing an admin warning banner for template overrides, and plan to fully remove support before the end of Q2.

Timeline

(estimated dates - subject to change)

• November 2024 - deprecation introduced

• March 2025 - admin warning banner enabled

• June 2025 - expected removal

Upgrading themes / plugins

Theme and plugin developers should refer to the Plugin Outlet guide to learn more about wrapper plugin outlets. Feel free to open PRs or Dev topics if you’d like to request a new extension point for your use-case.

[JonahAragon1 (Jonah Aragon)]

Is there a way to easily see which theme/plugin is triggering this admin notice? I looked through all of my themes and plugins and don’t see a templates/ directory in the root of their Git repositories for any of them.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@JonahAragon1

don’t see a templates/ directory in the root

It’s in /assets/javascripts/discourse or in /javascripts/discourse, not in the root.

[david (David Taylor)]

The warning banner should show the name of the theme/plugin. It’ll also be printed in the browser developer console.

If not, perhaps we have a problem with the deprecation - would you be able to share a link to an affected site?

[JonahAragon1 (Jonah Aragon)]

Thank you. It did not show in the warning banner but it did show in the developer console, although not very clearly.

Turned out to be this component.

DuckDuckGo Search Suggestions

https://github.com/notriddle/discourse-duckduckgo-search Solves Is there a way to suggest DuckDuckGo instead of Google for failed search UI?. A Discourse theme component to use DuckDuckGo as the suggested search system, instead of Google! p.s. You’ll probably want to customize some of the text strings to stop mentioning Google, too.

[david (David Taylor)]

Thanks @JonahAragon1. The theme identification should be much clearer than that, so I’ll get that fixed up

[david (David Taylor)]

This change will fix the warning banner so it identifies themes more clearly:

[AquaL1te]

Have you find a solution to get back DDG as search suggestion? I’ve disabled the component for now.

[JonahAragon1 (Jonah Aragon)]

No, I just decided to disable the form entirely. I don’t think anyone in my community uses it and I don’t really see the usefulness. I saw the component author proposed an update that requires a core change, so it’ll probably be working again soon.

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