The component is live now and it works really well, thanks again!
The only challenge we have now is that "topic list thumbnail resolution level’ affects the featured images as well. So we have either featured images that are a bit too small or thumbnails in the topic list that are too large. Would it be possible to have a “topic list featured images resolution level”?
Edit: And another thing: Apparently, the Topic list preview plugin sorted the featured images by tagging date which makes a lot sense imho. The theme component sorts by last post date which makes the featured images change quite rapidly. Would it be possible to sort by tagging date? Thanks so much!