Topic List Previews

merefield · May 19, 2020, 10:23am

OK I’d better summarise the current status as things are getting confusing:

There are now two distinct setups:

Existing, standard, Plugin based one. I’m thinking of replacing it with 2 though (I will give notice).

Plugin https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-topic-previews

^{*this link has been incorrect in the OP for some time, please make sure you are using the paviliondev repo.}

~~- Theme Component for Generating Thumbnails https://github.com/paviliondev/tlp-thumbnail-generator-component (this is a new requirement because of the way Discourse now supports Thumbnailing).~~ No longer required as Discourse has kindly just added a plugin facility. I’ve released an update to the plugin to accommodate.

OR:

TC based, experimental, expect minor issues but added bonuses of Featured Images on mobile and responsiveness to sidebars … optional plugin sidecar that adds features

Theme Component https://github.com/merefield/discourse-topic-list-previews-theme
Add the sidecar plugin if you want more features: - git clone https://github.com/merefield/discourse-topic-previews.git -b "theme_sidecar". At this point this is functionally very very similar to plugin.

Sorry for any confusion on different setups

Krischan · May 19, 2020, 3:42pm

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!

merefield · May 19, 2020, 3:54pm

Good suggestion, that’s implemented: FEATURE: offer independent Featured Images resolution level · merefield/discourse-topic-list-previews-theme@0b90138 · GitHub

Please update and let me know how you get on.

Krischan · May 19, 2020, 4:06pm

Works like a charm, thanks so much!

Would it be also possible to sort the featured images by tagging date (see above)?

merefield · May 19, 2020, 4:32pm

The plugin has it’s own API changes, unfortunately the TC does not, so not unless I can pull that from a simple existing HTTP request in one go.

Krischan · May 19, 2020, 5:23pm

Would the publication date work? Since we do a magazine with discourse and your TC, it would be odd, if a user could change the headlines by writing a comment.

Krischan · May 19, 2020, 6:09pm

Or can you get that feed “/tag/{tag}.json?ascending=false&order=created”?

thwright · May 19, 2020, 7:04pm

And the plan is to continue moving forward primarily with the TC, correct?

merefield · May 19, 2020, 7:15pm

Yep that could work. And perhaps a setting for latest versus created

merefield · May 19, 2020, 7:16pm

Yes correct. For all the reasons outlined earlier.

I don’t envisage needing to drop support for the plugin imminently but the TC will have the focus for new features.

The recent changes in Discourse are slightly unprecedented so hopefully we can look forward to a bit more stability in the coming months.

ozkn · May 20, 2020, 12:45am

hi,
2. TC based, experimental, expect minor issues but added bonuses of Featured Images on mobile and responsiveness to sidebars … optional plugin sidecar that adds features

Theme Component https://github.com/merefield/discourse-topic-list-previews-theme
Add the sidecar plugin if you want more features: - git clone https://github.com/merefield/discourse-topic-previews.git -b "theme_sidecar" . At this point this is functionally very very similar to plugin.

I followed these steps.

the like button does not appear. How can I show the like button ?

merefield · May 20, 2020, 4:59am

I’ve yet to implement that in this configuration. It’s coming

travelvc · May 20, 2020, 4:22pm

I have updated to latest version of the plugin (4.3.1) and discourse (2.5.0.beta4) and noticed that almost all of my topic list previews are gone

I am able to regenerate the preview image on a per-topic basis, however this is a) time-consuming, and b) nudges the topics to the top after I update them.

Is there a way to automatically regenerate the topic thumbnails?

I really love this plugin - it’s done wonders for our forum and makes it look great. I also tried the [edit - it was a from a different author so not relevant to this discussion] TC but found it looks quite different and has less options - so this plugin still seems superior to me unless someone can correct me?

merefield · May 20, 2020, 2:17pm

Yep, a post rebake from the console will do it: Rebake all posts?

But before you do that make sure this is big:

Otherwise those posts won’t have their remote images brought into the forum and the thumbnails won’t then be created.

The Theme Component is work in progress and you need the ‘plugin sidecar’ installed for the complete feature set. Actions is not yet supported but will be soon when I get a moment.

Oh, how so? There is a slight approximation made on tile size, but apart from missing actions it should be identical (aside from the tiles ships with slight drop shadows on the TC which I prefer personally).

travelvc · May 20, 2020, 4:15pm

This worked perfectly, my thumbnails are rebuilt — thanks so much for the pointer!

Arkshine · May 21, 2020, 4:09pm

Hey, similar issue as Ian C ; since the upgrade to Discourse 2.5.0.beta4, with Topic List Previews 4.4.0, most of the thumbnails disappeared (on a side-node, why not all?)

I’ve tried to rebake all posts. It did not help.

Any solution, please?

merefield · May 21, 2020, 4:45pm

Max days old is way too low. As I pointed out it should be a high number. 30 means anything older than a month will not be thumbnailed.

Arkshine · May 21, 2020, 4:47pm

The option is not enabled. It should not be affected, right?

merefield · May 21, 2020, 4:48pm

You haven’t checked the box. Images have to be uploaded.

Arkshine · May 21, 2020, 4:54pm

It has been disabled because of various issues with it. Also conflicting with custom modifications if I remember.

So, It’s enabled, and I’ve increased max old days. What to do next? I’m not sure how this options works. Does it means we need to wait every single image is downloaded before re-trying again rebacking?