Is anyone using, or has seen a Discourse install that has a visual newsfeed as the community home rather than the ‘forum style’ home? By visual newsfeed I mean something similar to what you see on Facebook, where topics & posts would be previewed with image or video content, for example, and members could interact directly with content within the newsfeed (again, similar to Facebook, able to react to and comment on content).
The screenshot was taken here, and I believe it’s made using this (and this!). I don’t think it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but short of heading to the marketplace, it might be your best bet.
I don’t have any empirical data to back this up, but I would assume the average Facebook post is shorter than the average Discourse post - so while seeing ‘Read more’ over there is relatively rare, it’s likely to be more of an issue on your site. That might be a necessary evil, though.
A custom plugin may mitigate that as the layout would be optimised for your usecase, so more text could comfortably fit in the same amount of screen real estate, but it might cost a lot.
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@khenmu thanks so much, this example is much closer to what we’re looking for than anything else I’ve seen.
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Have you seen Fakebook, a theme for social media lovers?
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This is great, thanks @HAWK!
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Here are a few other iterations of more content heavy feeds. None of these match your use case but they show you how customisable the feed can be.
Nature Photographers Network
ZBrush Artworks - ZBrushCentral
https://realtimevfx.com/
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Going to plug my own as I’ve put quite a lot of hours into it: https://www.starzen.space/
And shows off one key innovation that I added recently: background styling with dominant colour (calculated and displayed by the Topic List Previews plugin & theme component respectively).
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I’m kicking myself for not realizing there was a companion plugin! For months, I was under the assumption that there was no way to allow users to interact with topics (liking, sharing, etc) directly from the main feed, but thanks to @merefield and the rest of Pavilion, I’m now on cloud nine knowing that it’s actually possible. 
I guess I’ll have to add another reply to this topic!
Just so you know @Julie_Dee, there’s another theme that also achieves what you’re looking for.
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