Showcased Categories

:discourse2: Summary Showcased Categories allows you to add two “Showcased” topic lists (built from your choice of two different categories) to the top of your forum’s home page.
:eyeglasses: Preview Preview on theme-creator.discourse.org
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-showcased-categories
:open_book: New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

Install this theme component

In the theme component settings, you can customize the name of each column, as well as choose which category to pull from, along with the maximum amount of topics from that category you’d like to display.

Settings:

Name Description
show as sidebar If enabled, the showcased categories will only be rendered in a sidebar on the latest page.
feed one title Title for left area of topics on homepage
feed one category Choose only ONE category for the Feed One topic list
feed two title Title for right area of topics on homepage
feed two category Choose only ONE category for the Feed Two topic list
max list length How many topics should appear in the custom lists?
plugin outlet Advanced setting for additional customization

Thanks to @awesomerobot for building out the original structure of this component. :+1:

41 Likes

That’s great! I was recently thinking about something like that.
Thanks Jordan!

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Thanks, Jordan!
Looks really interesting!

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Suggestions to improve this component:

  • User customized or group customized. For example, we have different groups for which certain categories are more important than others. Of course, they change according to the group. So, it would be great if the component could be either user customized or at least that the admins could choose which categories to showcase according to group
  • To have the option for a sidebar instead of upfront, at least in the Latest view would be great.
5 Likes

Thanks for the feedback here!

This is an interesting suggestion :+1:. I wonder how we would handle a user who takes part in multiple groups? This could get a bit complicated but I do like the idea.

A sidebar could be nice as well :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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You can now choose to display the lists in a sidebar in the latest view :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Thanks for the suggestion.

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Really great!! :+1: Will try and leave feedback.

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Ok, so… the sidebar doens’t seem to work out of the box with non-default themes. We have a custom version of the Material Design theme and the featured categories appear above the latest list even in sidebar mode (and it actually breaks the margins layout). I’ll try to check if there’s a way around it.

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Jordan, hi, thanks for such a great compoment, but I still have a question, namely, is it possible to make the color of the blue bar customizable? Is there a way to change it in the plugin’s settings or to show the category’s design color?

1 Like

Sure!

To do so, you will need to do so either in your custom theme, or theme-component (probably the easier route).

What you want to target is .custom-homepage-columns .header-wrapper.

Something like this should work:

.custom-homepage-columns .header-wrapper { 
    background-color: `your color here`;
}
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Hi, Is it possible to make the entire block 2 times smaller in height, so that as a result, 2 times more news would be placed in the block, with the same block size as now.
Thank you.

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We have a max of 5 topics to be shown in each list currently. As far as spacing goes though, you should be able to target the css classes in the block to get the desired affect you want. :+1:

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Hi, can you post an example? Thank you.

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Sorry, new to theme editing. Does this mean I have to duplicate the component to be able to edit the colors? Is there another way to pull up the HTML/CSS?

1 Like

Sure!

To change the height of the topic-list items you would target this:

.custom-homepage-columns .topic-list .main-link { height: ??? }

Other than this though, the minimum allowed to show is 1 and the max is 5.

2 Likes

Understandable!

You do not need to duplicate the component in order to customize the look of this theme component.

Here’s what you will need to do:

  1. Navigate to /admin/customize/themes and click on components
  2. Click on install then create new and make sure you select component, you can name it whatever you wish!

It will then appear in the unused components area:

You will then need to enable it on your currently selected theme on this same page:

Once that is done you can click edit CSS/HTML

image

From there, you can add the customization css on the commoncss tab. You can add the code I shared earlier in there.

.custom-homepage-columns .header-wrapper { 
    background-color: `your color here`;
}
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Thank you! Seems so simple now :man_facepalming:

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Hey guys! The idea with different showcased categories based on group membership is exactly what I am looking for. And when a user is in multiple groups which have showcased categories configured, the TC could go by the primary group of the user.

In my case we have private categories for advertisement clients. We are looking for a way to display their individual category on top of the home page. That way they don’t have to dig through the forum to search for it.

3 Likes

Hey guys @jordan-vidrine I do not see this component working for me… alongside the discourse Air theme.
Here are my settings.


But I do not see a sidebar… and I am assuming because of the search bar I can not have this in the banner section.

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did you ever find the fix for this?? I am using the Air theme

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