# Tips and tricks: what do you need to know about Discourse platform

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/tips-and-tricks-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-discourse-platform/32>\
**Category:** Forum Guide & Feedback\
**Tags:** forum-tips\
**Created:** [July 24, 2023, 6:53pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/tips-and-tricks-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-discourse-platform/32 "2023-07-24T18:53:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![samccann](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/samccann/32/18_2.png) [@samccann](https://forum.ansible.com/u/samccann)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2023, 6:53pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/tips-and-tricks-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-discourse-platform/32/1 "2023-07-24T18:53:08Z")

</div>

(big thanks to Fedora for the [original version](https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/tips-and-tricks-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-discourse-platform/24773) of this page)

Hi, all,

Let’s create a collection of tips and tricks which you’ve learned about Discourse platform, which improve your user experience. We can use this post as a reference for newcomers. **This is a wiki post: _anyone can edit it, including you_.** Please make improvements through direct edits — or discuss suggested changes in the replies. To reduce clutter, replies will be automatically deleted after some time, so make sure everything important gets into the main post.

* * *

## Basics

1. Notifications can be configured by category or by topic

2. Editing is decoupled from viewing

3. You can choose your own default home page

## See only what you care about

Check out the [Navigation Guide](http://forum.ansible.com/t/navigating-the-ansible-forum-tags-categories-and-concepts/39/2) for details on subscription / notification settings.

Site still feel too overwhelming or too cluttered? Here’s how to quickly get a default view where you see what you care about — without going through and muting all the tags you’re not interested in.

1. Don’t worry about things (categories, tags, topics) you’re not Tracking or Watching. Just keep them at the normal level. They’re there to browse to if you want, just like you can browse to an unsubscribed mailing list archive.
2. [Set](https://forum.ansible.com/my/preferences/interface) your **Default Home Page** to “[Unread](http://forum.ansible.com/unread)”. This shows your Tracked and Watched topics. (It isn’t retroactive for categories and tags you add, though, so visit those directly to catch up when you first add them.)

## Views and Feeds

1. There is a text-only **raw version** of any comment or post.

2. Similarly, there is an **RSS feed** for each page.

3. Mailing list mode with **Reply via mail** support

## Fancy Post Formatting Features

1. Fancy timezones!

2. You can make polls!

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/original/1X/98c14f5c85220d7fb40a23b8346aa5ae8584811a.png)

1. Importing content!

Importing content into a post is quite good from other systems - try taking a Google Doc, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C to copy it, and then Ctrl-V paste it into the Discourse composer. Works _amazing_ well.

## More Site Tips and Help

See posts in [**Forum Guide** tagged with #forum-tips](http://forum.ansible.com/tag/forum-tips) for more in-depth tips, tricks, shortcuts, suggestions, and so on

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gwmngilfen](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/gwmngilfen/32/6_2.png) [@gwmngilfen](https://forum.ansible.com/u/gwmngilfen)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2023, 12:21pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/tips-and-tricks-what-do-you-need-to-know-about-discourse-platform/32/2 "2023-08-11T12:21:25Z")

</div>