What Themes are being used for these Discourse forums?

[Remo_van_de_Sande]

hi there friends,

I am exploring Discourse and are wondering if the following websites use a specific theme or if they are custom made. If custom made what would be a good starting point to recreate them ?

The first one is the following: OpenAI
https://community.openai.com/

The second theme has a split in the middle. Is this a specific setting or part of a theme I haven’t found yet ?
https://forum.solana.com/

The following two are quite similar also having a split theme. Anyone knows which themes they are build on ?
https://community.developer.atlassian.com/
https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/

The next one also has a split:
https://blenderartists.org/

Lastly, how does one make such a powerhouse as Epic Developer Community Forums

[Lilly]

hi @Remo_van_de_Sande welcome to Meta

they look like customs. but the top ones aren’t all that much different than mine or even Meta, with a few differences.

you my find something similar to some of these in theme category.

the split view is the catergories and latest topics view in Admin-settings desktop category page style Meta has that view as does my forum.

[EricGT]

I can only comment on the one by OpenAI as I was on the site when it was being created and transitioned to as the default theme.

Yes it is a custom theme and while I know who created it, won’t mention their name but perhaps they may find this and contact you or even respond here.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

I believe the admin of Blenderartists here’s a regular member of meta: Profile - bartv - Discourse Meta. You can probably ask him directly

The epic theme is a heavily customized one, maybe with custom plugins as well.

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

@Remo_van_de_Sande

Lastly, how does one make such a powerhouse as Epic Developer Community Forums

This is a heavily customised forum. Something like this will use plugins as well as theme modifications.
This is something that our partners can help you with; Discourse can help too of course, if you are on the Enterprise plans

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

As mentioned, most of the sites listed don’t deviate dramatically from the standard Discourse install (the exception being Epic, which has hundreds of hours of customization done at this point)…

There are a couple other off-the-shelf components that are similar to what’s used here:

• Custom Header Links (for additional links in the site header)
• Featured Tiles (the featured images on blenderartists.org)

[chapoi (Charlie)]

Thanks for the tag @EricGT

I would gladly point you to the OpenAI theme, but unfortunately that’s a private theme so I can’t share it.

But as Lilly said, those aren’t terribly difficult to recreate, so a good starting point would be to familiarise yourself with this excellent guide if you haven’t yet.

Beginner's guide to developing Discourse Themes

So, you want to create Discourse themes? Not sure where to start? Or maybe you have created Discourse themes before, but want to learn how to do even more cool things. Well, you’ve come to the right place Developer’s guide to Discourse Themes Subjects include a general overview of Discourse themes, creating and sharing Discourse themes, theme development examples, searching for and finding information / examples in the Discourse repository, and best practices. Prerequisites: …

And you’ll be customising in no time!

[Remo_van_de_Sande]

Hi there Lilly, thank you for the pointers but Im having trouble finding those components you mentioned. Are they found on GitHub or Im I overlooking something hm

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

The split views is a site setting, not a component

You’ll find it under community.example.com/admin/site_settings/category/basic

[Lilly]

@Lilly

the split view is the catergories and latest topics view in Admin-settings desktop category page style Meta has that view

li love how Meta changed it to boxes with subcategories right after i posted this

then they changed it back… mind games i tell you

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

It takes a bit of technical knowledge, but you can grasp useful information about customizations with the browser’s developer tools. In Chrome, F12 → Sources.

You have the list of the loaded files and can find stylesheets, themes and components javascript. Looking at the CSS and JS code here can sometimes give you clues, as well as looking directly at the page’s HTML code.

You can also see a comprehensive plugins list:

[Remo_van_de_Sande]

Hi Bas. As a techie I’m feeling like an idiot that I can’t set this up proper ha.Whatever setting I change doesn’t actually get applied to my forum. Might I be overlooking something ?

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

Looks like you have a theme that is overriding stuff.

If you enable safe mode (go to /categories?safe_mode=no_themes), it seems to work just fine

[Remo_van_de_Sande]

hm I am baffled why I can’t get it to work. For me safe mode was already enabled by default.

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

I’ll send you a pm so I can share some screenshots

[Peekoh]

This is an old topic but is Unreal Engine’s Documentation possibly a custom plug-in / theme?

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

They are listed as a customer of ours.

While I can’t say anything particular about our work for them, most customers of that size are running custom plugins and themes…