Hero Builder (built with AI)

ernestdefoe

🦸 Hero Builder — design a stunning, animated welcome banner for your forum, live

Your discussion list is the first thing every visitor sees. So why does it usually open with a plain list of threads? Hero Builder gives your community a polished, modern welcome — a fully customizable, animated hero banner you design live, right in the admin panel, with a different look for your home page and every single tag.

First impressions aren't a detail. They're the whole front door. Hero Builder makes yours unforgettable — without touching a single core file.

✨ What it does

Add a configurable banner to the top of your discussion list — a title, a subtitle, any Font Awesome icon, an animated gradient or a full-bleed cover image, and optional live community stats. Then set a distinct hero for the home page and for every tag, so each corner of your forum gets its own welcome.

🏷️ Title & subtitle — say hello, set the tone.
🎨 Any Font Awesome icon — just type the class (fas fa-meteor, fas fa-dragon, fab fa-discord …). No fixed preset list to fight against.
🌈 Animated two-colour gradient or a cover image — pick a palette or drop in a full-bleed background.
📊 Optional live stats — surface real community numbers right in the banner.
🧭 Per-context heroes — a separate hero for the home page and for each tag.
🧼 No core files touched — ships as a clean, self-contained extension.
---

🎛️ Hero Studio — design it live

Everything lives in Admin → Extensions → Hero Builder, inside the Hero Studio. Pick a context (the home page or any tag), edit the fields, and watch the banner update in a live preview as you type. No more saving, refreshing, and squinting to see how it turned out.

The Hero Studio live editor

Tabs across the top let you switch between the home hero and a per-tag hero, and the "Show the hero here" toggle lets you enable it only where you want it.

📦 Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/hero-builder
php flarum cache:clear

Then open Admin → Extensions → Hero Builder and start designing.

Requirements

Flarum 2.0+
PHP 8.1+
---

🔗 Links

GitHub: ernestdefoe/hero-builder
Packagist: https://packagist.org/packages/ernestdefoe/hero-builder
Support forum: https://ernestdefoe.online
---

📄 Credits & License

Built by Ernest Defoe.

Released under the MIT License — free to use, fork, and build on. Make your forum's front door something worth walking through. 🚪✨

tearofs

Excellent. Two suggestions:

1, option to hide that square background if user choose not to use Icon (Font Awesome)
2, option to choose using sharp corners instead of round corners

ernestdefoe

Will get that added. Should have an update tomorrow.

tearofs

ernestdefoe 😍 😍

ernestdefoe

tearofs I actually have had this built for a couple of days was just trying to fine tune it some before I released it.

tearofs

ernestdefoe

No rush, I think a lot of people would love this addon.

Now I can delete a few of the CSS lines lol greatly appreciated!

ernestdefoe

tearofs Not a problem. Going to get some sleep in a few and will work on this when I wake up.

ernestdefoe

@tearofs New version is out.

tearofs

ernestdefoe

Beautiful.

One last thing I ran into. There looks to be a '1px black frame' if you use image url (I tried different image with different url). On the other hand, there is no black frame if using gradient colors only.

Also, what is that 1px gap between banner and the top header? Is that intentional?

Stezkoy

This extension is excellent, but there are a couple of other great ones.
Subcategories can't be customized.
Add the ability to customize the header margin.
Customize the border and shadow.

ernestdefoe

Stezkoy Subcategories can't be customized.

Sub tags should be able to be customized. Will look into all the rest of the items later.

Edit: I stand corrected secondary tags can't be styled but in the next update they will be.

ernestdefoe

tearofs

Stezkoy

New update publishing now. Should be able to update soon. Issues should be fixed now.

Stezkoy

ernestdefoe margin-top not work,

and the shadow doesn't work either)

ernestdefoe

Stezkoy New version just released that should fix this issue.

Ralkage

Loving what AI can bring to the table 🙂

Stezkoy

Super!! consider also the possibility of manually adjusting the shadow.
In the extensions: FoF Badges, FoF Byōbu, FoF User Directory, Messages. there is also a hero, is it also possible to add a setting for them?

ernestdefoe

Stezkoy Super!! consider also the possibility of manually adjusting the shadow.

I'll see what I can do on this.

Stezkoy In the extensions: FoF Badges, FoF Byōbu, FoF User Directory, Messages. there is also a hero, is it also possible to add a setting for them?

I'll look into it but that kinda goes outside of the scope of what this extension was built for. Not gonna make any promises on it.

Stezkoy

ernestdefoe I'll see what I can do on this.

Select "custom"
and a simple field for entering your own values or variable.

ernestdefoe I'll look into it but that kinda goes outside of the scope of what this extension was built for. Not gonna make any promises on it.

These are just my suggestions for improvement, as they would be out of style.

And one more suggestion: So that the discussions themselves inherit the style from the tags. And in the discussion statistics there was a number of messages.
This is just my suggestion, if such a thing is possible at all. 😀

Stezkoy

Consider including verified users in your statistics; I think that would be more logical.
Line 45 in extend.php
'users' => User::query()->count(),

'users' => User::query()->where('is_email_confirmed', true)->count(),

tearofs

ernestdefoe

There is a round thingy floating in the background. Is there an option to disable this?