Building a new homepage for discuss

IanM

Behind the scenes, we've been working on a custom homepage for discuss, and today we are happy to soft launch it, in order to see how it fares with real data behind it, and of course gather feedback from you, the discuss users.

Right now, this is our 'first draft'. It has some rough edges. It could (and probably will) change over a few iterations.

Our goal is two-fold:

demonstrate the flexibility of Flarum to show a real world use case of custom components
provide a useful landing page, welcoming guests and existing users alike, surfacing (hopefully) useful content to them (you!)

Right now, it's not set as the homepage, we stay with the 'all discussions' that you're used to. It can be accessed by visiting /home, or clicking the 'Home' link in the side navigation (not 'Project Home'!)

What do you like about it? What do you hate?

Let's build this in the open, together....

MrLaviana1

IanM Wow! It looks incredible! It's definitely a great design with those stats—now I'll know how many people are online, something I could never tell before XD

ram0ng1

I found the design light and intuitive!
Now you can tell where @Karl is walking hahah

Karl

ram0ng1 what do you mean? lol

ram0ng1

Karl

I meant your "steps" around Flarum haha. Not sure if the translator didn't help much there... It's just a play on words! Now we can actually see where you're "walking" - meaning where you're replying.

Not that we couldn't before, but now we have it all on a single screen 😃

Karl

ram0ng1 lol you're good. Happy stalking friend 🙂

ram0ng1

Karl 😬

Capybara

The gradients look a bit muddy, especially in the light theme. Gradients have never really been part of Flarum's visual identity, so it might be worth dropping them on the discussion cards and in the «New to Flarum? Start with the docs» block. The design would be cleaner. The page already has enough color accents thanks to the colored buttons and tags.

On large banners that are meant to grab attention, gradients look appropriate

IanM

New changes based on feedback are now deployed to the new homepage, etc

luceos

I really enjoy this refreshing look of a community home page, however I think - especially for the intent of design behind Flarum - that the bright orange used on (almost) every element makes distinguishing relevance between them very hard. For instance, every announcement has an orange top border, every new extension topic has an orange left border. I feel like applying the theme style to the page has been overshot in this regard. Oh, and with the reddish/browning background (why would this be different from the rest of the community), all orange makes it a lot busier than usual.

自在の偶

the new look is nice 👍️

dragsugur

i think banner hero and upcoming events can be merged because right now the activity needs just too much scrolling.

here is my custom home page.

Karl

I wonder if these items being a 2 column instead of 3 would look better? Give these two columns more horizontal space for layout and find elsewhere to put the right most column somewhere?

Forogramero

IanM

It looks great. It’s just that I think the discussion area shouldn’t have that kind of rounded card, but should have that modern and current Flarum touch.

Too much rounded card gives that vibecoding feel. Not that is a bad thing, but maybe I am not used to this new looking.

Subarist

Forogramero
I agree. I think the rounded cards are perhaps a little overdone.

It’s not that I think the style is bad — rounded corners have become almost a standard visual language for AI products since Apple helped popularize them. But for Flarum, I feel that slightly sharper edges fit the brand identity better. Even the Flarum logo has that more distinctive, sharp character.

So I’d probably tone the rounded corners down a little and keep more of that familiar Flarum feel.

Subarist

luceos
You've been around since the very early days of Flarum and have stuck with it all the way to today. Do you remember where the Flarum orange originally came from? Maybe you could share the story with us. 🙂

I personally think it's been one of the most successful brand identities of the past decade. It's almost up there with Apple — just a tiny little bit behind. 😄
After all these years, when I see that orange, I immediately think Flarum. That's pretty impressive.

Wlork

That’s great, godd work !

It would be nice to have an extension for everyone where we can customise the different boxes 🙂

luceos

Subarist the logo and Flarum's actual design are made by @Toby, although we did have the logo retouched a bit to make it pixel perfect, the excellent design and color choice are a product of his brilliance.

clarkwinkelmann

Some observations from my use today:

The "welcome back" banner taking 50% of the vertical space on my 1080p monitor doesn't seem very efficient. Would be better to see more actual content at first glance.
The boxes under "Help build Flarum" have the same hover animations as the links on the same page, yet are not clickable. Either drop the animation or add links? The numbers for supporters, stars, commits, etc could also be deep links to other pages.

IanM

I’ve pushed another iteration this evening. Heading in the right direction, but not there yet, I feel.

Small steps, and it will be in a good place soon, thanks to your feedback 🙂