OK, working on something exciting.
I’ve created a complimentary plugin for the Theme Component that adds additional functionality.
So far I’ve added working Thumbnail Picker to the Theme Component based install. For this piece of functionality to work you also need this cut-down plugin. (Please also update your TC)
The experimental plugin is here:
- git clone https://github.com/merefield/discourse-topic-previews.git -b "theme_sidecar"
This adds two advantages:
- it modifies the criteria Discourse uses to determine which thumbnails are used by default and accepts more useful smaller thumbnails that would have otherwise been rejected (in my opinion the core criteria are too restrictive).
- adds a working thumbnail picker in the Topic meta editor so if you are not happy which one it chooses, you can override it. Functionally this is almost identical to the original plugin version, but it now works with the new Discourse thumbnail production logic.
My goal is to make the Theme Component as stable and feature rich enough to retire the original plugin.
Then, for a basic install you can just add the Theme Component.
If you are self-hosted or on a plan which allows you to add plugins, you can add the complementary plugin to add additional features.
Overall this will minimise maintenance whilst giving more people access to Topic List Previews.
The other significant advantage to the site admin, is that many more superficial changes to the front end won’t require a rebuild as you may only have to update the Theme Component.