Why does the logo navigate to Discourse home not main site home

UX
1

I’m not sure if this is UX or Support, but will try here.

Is there a reason why the Discourse navigation assumes it’s the only host on a domain?

I ask because the vast majority of Discourse deployments are subordinate to a “parent” site (eg www.domain.com) and have to put their Discourse site on another subdomain (eg support.domain.com). So the Discourse UI “home” link goes to the top of the subdomain that Discourse is on, not the parent site (which is the convention in all other web contexts).

The UX of this always trips up new users with a sort of “lobster pot” effect when they want to return to the parent. Most resort to mashing on the back button to get back, hacking the URL in their browser, or abandoning and trying to get back by searching (again in most cases) on Google.

There could be a few approaches to mitigate this, and obviously this issue isn’t unique to Discourse. But since Discourse is the best web discussion system in the world, I thought I’d ask here first.

2 Likes
2

Hi there – thanks for your kind words.

It is a very deliberate decision which has been discussed back and forwards here many times over the years – essentially the logo is the way to take you back to the Discourse home screen which is more intuitive when you’re actually on Discourse.

There is a theme component at Link to external site from the main Discourse logo which you can use if you’d prefer different behaviour.

3 Likes
3

Thanks Hawk, I can certainly take a look at the theme component.

Before I try it, is the default behaviour due to some technical limitation (I note the OP thinks it may not be a good idea)? You say it was a deliberate decision, but I also note Discourse isn’t the only system to do this.

1 Like
4

Nope, not a technical limitation - a design/UX choice. Give the theme component a go and see how your users feel about it. It’s easy to reverse.

5

As an user I would be very confused if a logo would lead me to different site and domain.

That isn’t right way to do marketing of www-version.

6

A lot of self-hosted sites are standalone and that is the default configuration, so the logo should, in those cases, always bring you to “home” of the community.

Adding Discourse to another “website” (it’s a separate app mind you!) is of course a reasonable think to do but it’s far from the only and base use case.

NB you can now display entire custom HTML pages within Discourse via plugins so Discourse can become the “entire” website, e.g. Landing Pages Plugin 🛩 - #95 by merefield

2 Likes
7

There’s also the Brand Header theme component which may be useful to add an extra ‘top level’ navigation similar to the parent site.

1 Like
8

I use the Custom Header Links theme component to place a “MyBrand Home” link next top the home icon.

I also have the logo be “MyBrand Forum” not just “MyBrand”

4 Likes
9

Ah, thanks for the pointers here - and I should have made it clear I was not talking about when the entire site is Discourse (no reason to change the nav in that case at all).

The only mystery that remains is why some sites that incorporate Discourse choose to have the “lobster pot” nav I have described (and observed in user testing). But that’s of course up to them.

Thanks again all for your help!

3 Likes