DevNL - Dutch developers forum - How I customized Flarum

mailpass

not bad, very nice!

[deleted]

Very nice @JasperVriends. A great layout which is hard to not please the eye.

MichaelBelgium

Damn, that looks so clean! ✨

vargmal

JasperVriends I've created a custom extension that's behaving like it's a theme

not shareable?

Your forum is very pleasing to the eyes and I like a lot the customizations you have done.

I would love to have smth like this too. I also understand the long work to reach such a result... so I don't expect you making a how too or sharing things. 🙂
Very well done!

JasperVriends

vargmal I won't release this particular theme, but I'm thinking about to create another great theme and share that. This may be a public theme for GitHub where other people are able to commit to.

Also I'll look if I'm able to create a theme tutorial for Flarum, but then people need JavaScript experience to follow it, so it may be less reachable for the community.

A question for those interested:

Are there any volunteers who want to work on a new Flarum Theme with me and keep it up-to-date through GitHub? If you're experienced with LESS CSS, and ES6 JavaScript, let me know!

Also, if there are people who like to design a good dedicated forum theme which can be used in this theme, you're welcome too!

fakruzaruret I think left tags sidebar is important. And the most appearence point is this on Flarum. Why you removed left sidebar for tags?

I think it depends per forum how important it is, for my forum for example tags aren't very important, the discussions and projects are. So I've chosen to keep it away.

But, because I kept it away, I added the 'popular tags' in the sidebar and updated the 'tags' page to make it more clear which tags are available to use 🙂

fakruzaruret

I think left tags sidebar is important. And the most appearence point is this on Flarum. Why you removed left sidebar for tags?

katos

JasperVriends Whilst I'm not so familiar with LESS and JS, I'm happy to assist where I can in terms of testing etc.

I've added a 'popular topics', 'popular projects', 'new projects' and 'popular tags' bar on the right. It loads an custom API endpoint ( https://www.devnl.nl/api/home/sideboard ) that's running some queries and results into this data. It's live data, so as soon a new project is made, it will be shown in the list immediately so it gives the shine it deserves.

I'd be very interested in hearing more about this and perhaps commissioning you for similar on my own site, if you're not already planning on making this available as an extension? 🤔

vargmal

JasperVriends I won't release this particular theme,

i meant the "custom extension" (thought it was a custom extension with which you could then build upon that your theme without affecting the core, and be able to switch it on and off every time there is an update).

JasperVriends Also I'll look if I'm able to create a theme tutorial for Flarum

That would be cool too. Like how you put the buttons of new, popular... on top. i like that. The sideboard is cool...

whatever you can throw at us would be nice 🙂

baolitoumu

Can you help me customize, I pay

r4nchy

this is some next-level customization

JasperVriends

ctml r4nchy Thanks!

the one thing I find a bit lacking are themes for flarum

I'm not very sure about that one, Flarum is beautiful compared to most other forum software. But it would be great to have some differences between other communitie 🙂

I hope you choose to release this some day to the community

I will try to build another theme someday that will be released and open source. But currently I'm a bit busy and I need to work and complete some other projects first 😎

ctml

JasperVriends

Well done! I hope you choose to release this some day to the community, the one thing I find a bit lacking are themes for flarum. This is definitely one of the better ones I've seen.

daniuwo

JasperVriends I like the devnl theme. Is there any progress on the new theme

Justoverclock

Like this!!! Interested!

when will be available the new theme?

fakruzaruret

I think flarum also need to right sidebar like this that include random and popular discussions parts. I hope a core team will take a step for right sidebar. May be this is milestone about design but in terms of funcionality right sidebar is important.

tolgaaaltas

fakruzaruret You can get result like this without sidebar. Just use filters top on the discussion list. The sidebar is unnecessary, it's blocking big part of the screen.

huuduy216

tolgaaaltas many (not all) user doesn't even notice the filter in my experience. And I think having a side bat keep user engaged with your forum longer too

fakruzaruret

tolgaaaltas I use flarum for almost one year and I use top filters may be 4-5 times in total. The main reason ist that I would like to see right sidebar for showing past discussions by random on home page with last discussions at the same time. I think this provide to make easy discover forum.

I think this layout has more functionalty and increase the duration of stay on the website (I dont have statistics but I feel) : https://dev.to/

matteocontrini

huuduy216 many (not all) user doesn't even notice the filter in my experience

I agree on this, some of my users found out that the sort dropdown exists just recently 😅

tolgaaaltas

fakruzaruret I think this layout has more functionalty and increase the duration of stay on the website (I dont have statistics but I feel) : https://dev.to/

This concept completely different from Flarum. It's more like mixed versions of modern forums (Flarum and Discourse) and PeepSo (or FB). Maybe a little bit blog based systems (like Ghost). Discussions feels like articles, but you can answer them. I agree Forem looking cool and interesting but not for everyone. It has a potential but i still don't understand their focus point. Are they trying to developing forum, blog or social media-based community platform?

askvortsov

I'll be completely honest, I don't see this coming to core in the immediate future, it's too opinionated a feature IMO.

HOWEVER, I would absolutely love to see an extension that adds it. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, and due to recent core architecture changes, it would be quite easy for other extensions to extend it and add further customizations. If there's something in core that currently doesn't allow making an extension like this, I'd be happy to discuss potential changes.