Vela is a community design built on top of Discourse. While the design is conceptually distinct, the implementation aims to align closely with the ongoing development of Discourse. As a result, installing Vela should be simple and seamless on any Discourse instance.
Theme
The core building block is a custom theme:
Theme components
The theme bundles several theme components that extend its functionality:
Custom Notifications Menu
Custom User Menu
Discourse Header Search
Discourse Topic Cards
Site Settings
The broader concept is further supported by adjusting Discourse site settings. These adjustments are optional. Below is a selection for reference:
| Site setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Suggested topics | 0 |
| Desktop category page style | Categories Only |
| Mobile category page style | Categories Only |
| Enable user status | Enabled |
| Enable welcome banner | Disabled |
| Default email digest frequency | Never |
| Discourse Narrative Bot enabled | Disabled |
| Calendar enabled | Enabled |
| Discourse post event enabled | Enabled |