You can now set a chat channel as Discourse's default homepage

News and Events Announcements

AI-generated summary

Discourse has introduced a new option to set a chat channel as the site’s default homepage, available in updates from October 15th. As detailed by awesomerobot, this feature allows administrators to select a specific chat channel for users who land on the root URL. If a user does not have access to the selected channel, the site falls back to the first item in the top menu setting (typically /latest or /categories). To allow anonymous visitors to view the chat preview, admins can add anonymous users to the chat allowed groups setting. This change aims to facilitate launching new communities with a chat-first approach. In response to a request for visuals, awesomerobot clarified that there are no significant visual changes; the chat interface remains consistent, though logged-out visitors see a sign-up prompt instead of a text input.

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As of October 15th, Discourse updates will include a new option for the default homepage site setting: chat channels!

Discourse chat channel homepage settings
Discourse chat channel homepage settings1658×562 60 KB

When you select “Chat channel” as an option you get a secondary setting to choose a channel. If the channel selected isn’t available to someone, the homepage falls back to the first option in the top menu setting (often /latest or /categories).

If you’d like anonymous visitors to have read-only preview of the homepage channel you can add anonymous users to the chat allowed groups site setting.

This makes it a little easier to start a new community with a chat-first approach :rocket:

logged in chat homepage
logged in chat homepage3022×1810 295 KB

logged out chat homepage
logged out chat homepage3018×1806 307 KB

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Please show me a screenshot of what it will look like.

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Sure! I’ve added a couple screenshots to the original post. There’s no visual change, chat continues looking the same as it does when not set as the homepage. Logged out visitors get a prompt to sign up instead of the text input.

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