Cedric, founder of ForumSpark
Not every board wants to have a classic list of categories and forums. While it is dense and familiar, some communities have the desire to customize beyond traditional listings.
What changed
The forum home now has four layouts: the classic List, the denser Compact, a new Grid of live section cards with cover images, and a Feed that turns the whole board into one scrollable stream you can reply to without leaving the page. You choose which layouts your board offers and which one it opens on, and every member can pick their own favorite.
Grid keeps your categories but swaps the table for section cards. Each card carries a cover image, the section's five latest topics, and it stays alive while you look at it.
Cover images with a focal point. Upload a cover per section in the admin panel and drag a dot to decide which part of the image stays in view at every size. Sections without a cover get a clean icon tile instead.
Live cards. When someone posts, the card refreshes in place with a subtle pulse. No reload, no polling; it rides the same realtime connection as Live chat.
Live signals. Unread counters on every section, a reading now chip that shows where people are at this moment, and hover previews on every topic title.
Your structure intact. Categories stay collapsible and remember their state, and the whole page follows your theme like every other 2.0 view.
Feed flattens the board into a single stream of the latest posts, newest first, with the full post right there in the card.
Three tabs. All shows everything you can see, Following narrows the stream to topics and sections you watch, and Hot ranks what the community is actually talking about over the last two days.
Act without leaving. Vote in polls, react, follow a topic with one tap on the bell, open image mosaics in a lightbox, and reply inline with the full editor. Your reply lands in the topic like any other post.
Post from the top. A compose bar sits above the feed. Pick a section, write with the normal editor, done.
More than posts. New members joining, upcoming events, fresh gallery albums and marketplace releases slot in between posts, so the feed reads like the life of the board rather than just its text.
Built for scrolling. Infinite scroll, a new posts pill when activity arrives while you read, filters to limit the stream to the sections you care about, and a caught up line when you have seen it all.
Grid and Feed are settings, not a redesign forced on anyone. In the admin panel you decide which layouts the switcher offers and which one the board opens on. Members who prefer something else can set a personal default in their preferences, or just tap the switcher at the top of the index, which remembers their choice per device. You can run Grid view on a desktop, while having Feed view on your mobile.
And the part we care about most: none of this made your board heavier. The classic index still renders first with nothing extra on it. Grid and Feed only load when someone switches to them, and then stay cached so flipping between layouts is instant.
Everything above is live on every board today. Enjoy!
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