Installation

You need administrator access to your Discourse site. New to themes and components? See Discourse’s guide to using themes for installation, attaching components and using Preview.

Test Brand Navigation on a non-default theme. If it is already used by a live theme, use a separate component copy or staging site: the same component’s code and settings are shared across all themes using it.

Install from GitHub

Open Admin → Appearance → Themes & components, select Components, choose Install → From a git repository, and enter:

https://github.com/CodeWorksLabs/brand-navigation.git

Installing from GitHub lets Discourse check for component updates. It follows the latest compatible Git code, which can be newer than the last tagged release. See Versions and updates if you need to understand that difference.

Try it on a preview theme

1. Create or choose a non-default theme for testing. Attach Brand Navigation only to that theme for now.
2. Leave the component’s Enabled? control on and open the test theme with Discourse’s Preview control.
3. Keep that preview active while opening Brand Navigation’s settings. This lets its Appearance and Configuration bundles panels load.
4. Edit the sample Community link, or import a saved configuration.
5. Refresh the preview after saving. Check links, menus, signed-in/signed-out visibility, desktop/mobile layout and light/dark colors.

The component’s Enabled? control is its only activation switch. Turning it off also removes its custom administration panels; keep it enabled on the isolated preview theme while configuring it.

Make it available to visitors

Once the preview is ready, attach Brand Navigation to the theme your visitors use, then repeat the checks there. If you are replacing another navigation component, use Replace another component to avoid duplicate menus or icons.

Need to undo the change on one theme? Detach Brand Navigation from that theme and restore its previous components. Turn off Enabled? only when you intend to stop Brand Navigation on every attached theme; its configuration is retained.

Next: Add links, menus and colors.