# Discourse Upgrades

**URL:** <https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383>\
**Category:** Site Feedback\
**Created:** [December 8, 2019, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383 "2019-12-08T04:06:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![burrrata](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex032/user_avatar/discourse.sourcecred.io/burrrata/32/135_2.png) [@burrrata](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/u/burrrata)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2019, 4:23am UTC](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383/2 "2019-12-08T04:23:14Z")

</div>

# Ideas

* * *

## [Summarize this topic](https://www.discourse.org/features) button.

- Apparently it’s a thing. We should try it out.

## Polls

> **[How to Create Polls](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-create-polls/77548)**
>
> Creating a poll The easiest way to create a poll is to use the poll builder. The poll builder can be accessed from the ⚙ in the topic composer, and allows you to make a poll without needing to know the exact syntax. Manually creating a poll To...

_Poll ([view on site](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383/2))_

## Custom Emojis

- Apparently this is an option

## Custom Banner

> **[Versatile Banner](https://meta.discourse.org/t/versatile-banner/109133)**
>
> This theme component is an evolution of the very popular Banner themes (and instructions for customizing them). The goal is to provide more ease and flexibility through the use of theme settings. Preview at Discourse Theme Creator Below is a...

## Embedding

- We could embed the SourceCred Discourse into the website. This would help us convert interested people into community members 🙂

## Integrations

> **[Discourse integrations](https://discourse.org/integrations)**
>
> Integrate your Discourse forum with your favorite apps and services.

## Questions, FAQs, and/or AQs (WIP)

~~We need to think through how to address the needs of different types of community members. In addition to the `Getting Started` category and guides, a `Help` or `Questions` category might help too.~~ Created a [Help](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/c/help/25) category 🙂

Could (maybe) even roll it as a Stack Overflow type thing where as people ask questions, if that question is common it gets added to an FAQ Artifact, and then they get Cred from asking a question and engaging with a common problem. I dunno how technically feasible that is atm, but encouraging people to engage, learn, and share knowledge is essential. Will create a post and/or [Initiative wish list](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/about-the-initiatives-wishlist-category/311) item to explore further.

The issue is, chronological ordering isn’t the best for such threads… you want to be able to see the best answers upfront. Maybe one approach would be to have askers ask a question according to template, the question is a wiki, and the template has slots for linking to + quoting from the accepted answers (maybe as determined by # of likes).

## Topic Templates

> **[What are Topic Templates?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-are-topic-templates/38295)**
>
> Topic templates are a useful tool to reinforce forum conventions or to guide new users. Category-specific topic template Some categories might follow a strict pattern. One such example would be a Movies category, wherein you’d like users to start...

## Boxes

> **[Displaying sub-categories in boxes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/displaying-sub-categories-in-boxes/59371)**
>
> There are two new ways to display a list of sub-categories within the parent category: in boxes with only the name, logo, and description in boxes with name, logo, and a list of some featured topics You can enable these styles by visiting the...

> **[howto](https://meta.discourse.org/c/howto/10)**
>
> Tutorial topics that describe how to set up, configure, or install Discourse using a specific platform or environment. Topics in this category may only be created by trust level 2 and up.

We have [our first boxes](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/c/the-credsperiment/13)!

## Themes

[Dark mode, image galleries, and more could be ours!](https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-using-discourse-themes/91966)

## Anonymous posting?

- ~~Not sure if this would be a feature or a bug, but if we can allow people to post without first creating a profile that might A) lower friction in the onboarding flow, and B) make it easier for people to say what they really want without compromising their reputation (if that’s a thing people become concerned with)~~ As @Beanow pointed out [here](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383/6) this is not ideal for the SourceCred community right now.

## Badges

- Would be cool to leverage badges to make user profiles more fun and also informative to new users. For example, Discourse admins could have a badge, community engagement volunteers could have a badge, tech support volunteers could have a badge, etc… All of these players would get Cred for contributing so maybe they’re semi-volunteers? but you get the idea 🙂

## Solved Support Tickets

- Not sure if this is the intended usecase of this feature, but the Discourse [Solved](https://www.discourse.org/plugins/solved.html) integration allows users to post problems and then report when they’re solved. Could be great for community/tech help, esp for onboarding and supporting projects trying to learn about and deploy SourceCred for their communities.

## Pinned welcome thread wikis on every category

- As advertised.

### Team Building

- [https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-teambuild-run-your-own-team-building-activity/134907](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-teambuild-run-your-own-team-building-activity/134907)

### Comments in website

Like [this](https://blog.codinghorror.com/welcome-to-the-internet-of-compromised-things/#discourse-comments). More info [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-via-javascript/31963).

  

## Homepage

Default View

- Could make default “homepage” view show categories rather than just new threads

Cool hompages

- [https://experts.feverbee.com/](https://experts.feverbee.com/)
- [https://community.effectiveremotework.com/](https://community.effectiveremotework.com/)

If we don’t go with the splash screen, then we should pin some threads

- welcome thread
- mega thread with all relevant SourceCred info

Questions:

- If Cred flows through the forum, but not the website, should we try to keep the website as simple as possible to get new users into the forum as fast as possible so that they can start engaging with the community and/or earning Cred?
- Speaking of, are we measuring views on pages/threads? Because if the forum is the main place for people to create and update information related to SourceCred, then we should give Cred for view too. For example, an FAQ list might not get a lot of engagement, but will definitely be useful. Measuring the amount of people that view it might help?

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.sourcecred.io/t/discourse-upgrades/383)._