Configuration of Discourse Communities

We have a new website being released soon. We are managing a Community Forum and are using Discourse as a plug-in. We have preliminarily selected a site suitable Discourse template. We have it running in a staging environment now. We are looking for a front end developer to configure Discourse with the following requirements. Project Spec: 1. Build a branded homepage experience: Create a Discourse theme component that displays a global welcome message and a grid of five to six branded community cards on the homepage. Each card should include a graphic, community name, short description, and link to the corresponding category. 2. Apply brand styling: Configure the approved color palette, typography, logo assets, favicon, and visual spacing so the Discourse experience feels connected to the parent site. 3. Support responsive design: Ensure the community card layout works on desktop, tablet, and mobile. 4. Configure legal acknowledgement: Enable the Discourse Policy plugin or equivalent native policy acceptance workflow so users must accept the legal statement before posting or accessing restricted community areas. 5. Validate SSO group mapping: Confirm that SSO passes the required user attributes and group memberships into Discourse so access to restricted categories can be granted automatically. 6. Create category permission model: Map each community category to the right Discourse group and confirm whether users can see, reply, create topics, or moderate within each category. 7. Preserve admin editability: Make sure non-technical admins can update community names, descriptions, card copy, and graphics without code changes whenever possible. 8. Document the setup: Provide a short admin guide explaining how to add a new community, change a graphic, update the welcome text, adjust access, and replace the legal statement. Skills Required: Must-have developer/admin skills 1. Discourse administration experience You should understand how to configure: • Categories and subcategories • Groups and permissions • Trust levels • User roles: admin, moderator, staff, member • Pinned topics, category descriptions, and homepage behavior • Plugins/theme components • Backup, staging, and production environments ________________________________________ 2. Discourse theme and front-end customization For the branded homepage with community cards, graphics, colors, and fonts, they need light front-end skills: • HTML • CSS / SCSS • Basic JavaScript • Responsive design for desktop and mobile • Ability to work with Discourse themes and theme components • Ability to apply brand guidelines cleanly ________________________________________ 3. SSO and identity/access mapping Since your tech team already enabled SSO, this person needs enough understanding to validate the handoff between the parent site and Discourse. They should know: • SSO / OAuth / OpenID Connect concepts • How Discourse receives user identity from the parent site • How user groups or attributes map into Discourse groups • How those groups control category access • How to test restricted-access communities ________________________________________ 4. Plugin configuration For legal acknowledgement and possibly moderation workflows, they should be comfortable installing and configuring approved Discourse plugins, such as: • Policy / terms acceptance plugin or equivalent workflow • AI/moderation plugins if used • Chat or notification integrations if moderators need alerts • Any approved theme components ________________________________________ ________________________________________ Nice-to-have skills UX/UI design judgment • Clean card layouts • Good spacing • Mobile-friendly visual hierarchy • Accessibility • Brand consistency • Simple onboarding flow This could also be provided by our designer working with you, subject to discussion and portfolio samples you may provide. See the attached file for the Discourse plug in as it exists today