Promote to Front Page

[jernatety]

Is this supposed to promote the topic to the front page? If so, it doesn't do it for me. I have two topics which get updated every week, (SHSHL Top Scorers, and SHSHL League Standings). Both of which after I update I'd like to have back on top on the front page. Neither go to the front page when I promote. Both are topics which are in the Forum SHSHL which is declared in "Display forum-posts on frontpage from:" Front Page settings.

Thank you for any help.

[@rjen]

The promoted posts will only be shown on the frontpage if one of these Frontpage layouts is chosen:
Selected topics only
Selected topics + articles

Layout: Display forum-posts on frontpage shows forum-posts based on creation date. Promoting does not affect that...

I agree this is not very intuitive, especially since the 'Promote to frontpage' button is showing even when the chosen frontpage layout will not show the topics.

I think we should only show the button if the button can actually be used. I can fix this in the next bugfix release...

[jernatety]

Thank you for the reply, is there any way to be able to promote existing topics after I modify these two topics every week during the hockey season? Each one will be edited each week after the games have been played and the standings change, same with the top scorers.

[@rjen]

Hmm, thats more of a recent replies thing. The Frontpage shows topics not the replies, that's why it sorts by topic order not reply order. Would a sort by last reply be better?

[jernatety]

That I guess would be a problem or trickier, there are no replies. I'm editing the existing OP to update with the most current statistics.

[@rjen]

If that is what you want you can also consider making these topics articles. That way you can control how they are showing.

If you put those articles in blocks you can also put that block on top of the board you want them to show in...

[sgm09]

I agree this is not very intuitive, especially since the 'Promote to frontpage' button is showing even when the chosen frontpage layout will not show the topics.

I think we should only show the button if the button can actually be used. I can fix this in the next bugfix release...

welp, this fix does more bad than good if you ask me.
I wrote with chatgpt a custom block code to display the promoted topics in a more compact manner, with poster avatar and a custom layout. After I got it working, I realised I can't actually promote the topics unless I have the promote topics option enabled in what to show on frontpage. Which of course, would lead to duplicate and unwated display of content. The promoted stuff can exist regardless if I choose the builtin option to display them, like in this example with the custom code.
Would you please consider fixing this again, maybe offering an option to display the promote button on topics that does not depend on any feture being enabled or not. Thanks

[@rjen]

I don't think so. Promote to front page is intended for exactly that.

If you wrote a custom block that uses that indicator than that's clever, but really an edge case. Not something we should adapt the core code to.

[sgm09]

Chatgpt is pretty clever indeed. So what do you suggest we use as an indicator then ?
I would disagree it's an edge case. Why should the idea of promoted topics be stuck to a particular display option, that is mandatory to be enabled for the promoted button to even appear ? This doesn't make much sense to me, in a project that allows extensive customization, custom php code blocks and so on.

Ok now I just found that there's sticky topics in smf, without mods. I willuse that
Still, the way this promoted posts is designed should be more flexible.

[@rjen]

I do like the idea to create blocks with selected topics . Would you mind sharing the block code?

It may help formulating an alternative option...