# Rich Editor + Theme Component

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/rich-editor-theme-component/378773
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [August 15, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rich-editor-theme-component/378773 "2025-08-15T17:09:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

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### Author: ![Joshua\_Lyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/joshua_lyon/32/117236_2.png) [@Joshua\_Lyon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Joshua_Lyon)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rich-editor-theme-component/378773/1 "2025-08-15T17:09:26Z")

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My goal is that when a user includes a link to a particular URL (domain + base path), I can automatically display that with special formatting.

I’m able to accomplish this in the rendered post with `decorateCookedElement()` but I can’t seem to figure out how I can hook into the Rich Text Editor display to customize the look of the link there.

**Are there any `api` features that could be used within an `apiInitializer` of a Theme Component to customize the Rich Text Editor rendering**?

I was trying to avoid having to build a plugin to run on the server itself… and I haven’t come up with a simpler solution yet, but I am open to alternative ideas! (For example, I don’t want to kill the OneBoxing of this domain as a whole as the non-SPA marketing pages have nice OpenGraph tags for OneBoxing)

## Historical Approach: `decorateCookedElement()`

I’ve historically done something similar for videos served from [Bunny.net](http://Bunny.net) ([reference post](https://meta.discourse.org/t/youtube-vs-vimeo-video-embed-width/231565/19)) where I let the standard rendering happen (OneBox video) and then used `decorateCookedElement()` to apply some fixes to OneBox’ed videos from the [Bunny.net](http://Bunny.net) streaming URL ([theme-initializer.gjs#L8-L15](https://github.com/joshualyon/discourse-bunny-box/blob/3dfb006f39e896732520cc4c32dc0350f57d3be8/javascripts/discourse/api-initializers/theme-initializer.gjs#L8-L15)) like aspect ratio, allowing fullscreen, etc.

For the Bunny videos, this worked fine as in the editor, it always displays the grayed out OneBox Video Placeholder (gray box with the white video icon) so that content didn’t need to get tweaked anyway

## Rich Text Issue

The challenge with using `decorateCookedElement()` for my _current_ goal of being able to swap out links to a particular URL (domain + base path) is when a user includes that link on its own line in the Rich Text Editor and then presses enter, the editor converts it to a OneBox and I haven’t been able to figure out if there’s a way to hook into that rendering flow or otherwise customize it.

 ![Google Chrome - Custom Tile Import Link Renderer - Staff Drafts - SharpTools Community 2025-08-15 at 10.31.19@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/1/a/c/1ac11838ed28d36be0c8d1ba8158d6a4c6c15c91.jpeg)

This particular link is to a feature within a Single Page App (static hosting) so it doesn’t provide a particularly meaningful set of Open Graph / meta tags and which makes the OneBox unintuitive and I’ve noticed community members wrapping their import links in code braces and other workarounds.

As such, I was thinking that if I could customize how this particular link rendered in the Rich Text Editor too, users would see a more intuitive format and go with it.

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