We have recently setup a new discourse to evaluate the possibility of migrating our existing forum to this platform.
We have a 20 yr. plus membership base that is is strongly against moving away from our framed forum which lists topics on the left and scrolls independent from the content on the right.
I am curious if someone is able to comment on the viability of doing this in Discourse with a new theme development or otherwise. If it’s something possible, I am happy to start discussion with a programmer for a temporary gig doing this.
It is far from straightforward I suspect as you are combining the functionality of the discovery route with the topic route. It’s not a simple reskin of either.
BUT, I have actually recently been looking at how one might extend the Babble chat plugin to do something similar but couldn’t dedicate enough time from paid work. Essentially this would be adding Topic support to Babble.
I’d definitely be interested in discussing my agency Pavilion picking this up so long as the results were open source (the plugin extensions that is, not necessarily any additional theming)
Do you have a budget in mind? To set your expectations this could be quite involved and far beyond a theming exercise. Happy to take the discussion offline.
If you want to contact me directly chris@mixedmartialarts.com we can discuss the project a little more. I am happy to have it be open source that’s not an issue, and I know this isn’t an easy project, but we want to at least do the leg work to see what may be possible.
