GridIron Nation 🏈

A Flarum 2 theme for college football fan forums.

Crimson palette, DM Sans, stadium-scoreboard hero, showcase-card discussion

list with clickable likes, ticket-stub post layout, live ESPN score

ticker, recruit board, full dark mode.

Renamed from ernestdefoe/fbsfb. v2.x ships as

ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation (kebab-case, matches the rest of the

ernestdefoe/* family). Upgraders: the package rename is handled by a

settings-table migration that copies the legacy fbsfb.* /

ernestdefoe-fbsfb.* rows under the new prefixes on first boot.

Old rows stay in place so a rollback to v1 keeps working.

---

Screenshots

Homepage — Light Mode

Homepage — Dark Mode

Discussion Page — Light Mode

Discussion Page — Dark Mode

Screenshots are auto-generated by scripts/screenshots.mjs

(puppeteer-core against flarum.test). Run after a UI change:

node scripts/screenshots.mjs

---

Features

🏟 Stadium Hero

• Scoreboard stats row — MEMBERS, TOPICS, POSTS, ONLINE, NEWEST.

  ONLINE opens a dropdown of who's around right now; NEWEST exposes the

  most recently registered user.

• Composer trigger — pill-shaped "Tell everyone what you're working

  on…" that opens the New Discussion composer. Reads as the primary

  affordance on the homepage.

• Pill nav row — rendered below the hero gradient (not inside it)

  so the chips read on the page background.

• Welcome hero forced visible — the per-visitor dismiss flag is

  honoured by Flarum core; we override it to keep the themed hero on

  for everyone, but the admin's empty-welcomeTitle escape hatch still

  hides it.

🃏 Showcase Discussion List

Standalone reimplementation built from Flarum 2 primitives — **no

ramon/avocado dependency required**.

Each row renders as a card with:

• Author avatar + name + relative time + tag pills + Reply button

• Bold title (highlighted on search hits)

• Two-line excerpt pulled from the OP

• Embedded last-reply preview chip (avatar + author + snippet)

• "See N other replies" overflow link

• Footer stats row (likes + replies, ICU-pluralised)

• Crimson yard-line accent strip down the left edge for unread /

  sticky rows; muted strip on read rows

• Locked rows get a subtle treatment so they don't disappear

📝 Post Playcard

Posts on the discussion page get card chrome with the same yard-line

accent — crimson on the OP, muted on replies. Built **on top of Flarum

2's native Post grid** (no layout overrides), so it survives core

updates and plays nicely with any extension that injects controls,

reactions, or social-groups extras into the Post body.

📺 Live Scores Ticker

• Proxies ESPN's public college-football scoreboard endpoint — no API

  key required.

• Renders as a horizontal scrolling ticker above the discussion

  list, with up to 6 game cards sorted Live → Scheduled → Final.

• Pulsing green LIVE badge with quarter + clock detail.

• Winning score highlighted in crimson.

• Server-side cache: 60 seconds (visitors don't hammer ESPN).

• Refreshes client-side every 60 seconds.

• Graceful fallback — shows "Scores unavailable" if ESPN times out.

⭐ Top Recruits Widget

• Pulls live recruiting data from the

  ernestdefoe/recruiting

  extension when installed. Without that extension, the widget hides

  itself.

• Headshots via On3 photo enrichment.

• CollegeFootballData.com is the source of truth — set your API key in

  the GridIron Nation Recruiting admin panel.

• Crimson position badge (QB, WR, DT …), star rating, school slot.

🔥 Trending Widget

• Five most-recently-active discussions straight from Flarum's store

  (no extra API round-trip).

• Rank 1–2 in crimson, rest in muted grey.

• Reply count + relative time per row.

🎯 Hero Tag Decoration

• Anchors up to two large, semi-transparent FontAwesome glyphs to the

  right side of every tagged discussion's hero, pulled from the

  secondary tag's icon (set per-tag in the Flarum Tags admin panel).

• Falls back to any tag with an icon if no secondary candidates exist

  — flat tag setups still get decoration.

• All three knobs (enabled, icon count, opacity 0–100) are

  admin-configurable.

🌙 Dark Mode

• Full [data-theme^="dark"] + system prefers-color-scheme: dark

  support.

• Surfaces shift from #0c0d10 through #16171c cards to #0f1013

  inset areas (inputs, blockquotes, code blocks).

• Primary shifts to #e05c5c for legibility on dark backgrounds.

• Cascade-correct: dark block lives last in the stylesheet, no

  specificity fights.

🎨 Design System

• Crimson primary (#B22222) with #8B0000 dark + #d94f4f light

  variants.

• DM Sans Variable loaded from Google Fonts, replaces Flarum's

  default font throughout.

• 14 px organic border-radius on cards, dropdowns, modals,

  buttons, and inputs.

• CSS custom properties for --primary-color, --body-bg,

  --control-bg, --border-color, etc. — overlaying themes and

  ramon/colored compose cleanly.

---

Installation

Via Composer

php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear```

### Manual

1. Download or clone this repo into `extensions/ernestdefoe-gridiron-nation/`
2. Run `composer install` in the Flarum root
3. Run `php flarum migrate`
4. Run `php flarum cache:clear`
5. Enable **GridIron Nation** in the Flarum admin panel

**JS is pre-compiled.** `js/dist/forum.js` and `js/dist/admin.js` are

committed — no local build step needed for a vanilla install.

---

## Requirements

| Dependency | Version |

|---|---|

| PHP | `^8.3` |

| Flarum | `^2.0` |

| guzzlehttp/guzzle | `^7.0` |

### Optional, but recommended

| Extension | Why |

|---|---|

| `ernestdefoe/recruiting` | Powers the Top Recruits widget with live CFBD data + On3 photo headshots. Without it, the widget hides. |

| `ramon/colored` | Per-tag color tinting on hero + discussion-list borders. GridIron Nation wires `data-colored-border=left/full` cleanly against the showcase card and yard-line accent. |

| `flarum/realtime` | Live discussion-list / notification / typing-indicator updates over a websocket. We hide the "N updates available" banner so the list refreshes silently. |

---

## Admin Settings

Under **Extensions → GridIron Nation** in the Flarum admin panel:

| Setting | Default | Purpose |

|---|---|---|

| `widget_live_scores` | `true` | Show the Live Scores ticker |

| `widget_trending` | `true` | Show the Trending sidebar widget |

| `widget_top_recruits` | `true` | Show the Top Recruits sidebar widget |

| `hero_deco_enabled` | `true` | Render FontAwesome glyph decoration on discussion heroes |

| `hero_deco_icon_count` | `2` | 1 or 2 icons (2-icon mode requires ≥ 768 px viewport) |

| `hero_deco_opacity` | `35` | Glyph opacity, 0–100 (set to `0` to hide without disabling) |

---

## API Endpoints

| Method | Path | Description |

|---|---|---|

| `GET` | `/api/gn-live-scores` | ESPN scoreboard proxy (public, 60 s cache) |

| `GET` | `/api/gn-online` | Users online in last 5 min (auth-aware, per-actor cache) |

The retired `/api/gn-recruits` endpoints from v1.x have been removed —

recruit data now comes from `ernestdefoe/recruiting`'s

`/api/cfbd-recruits` endpoint when that extension is installed.

---

## Building JS from source

```cd js
npm install
npm run build   # production
npm run dev     # watch mode```

---

## Upgrading from `ernestdefoe/fbsfb` (v1.x)

The composer rename forces Flarum to treat this as a fresh extension

ID. To upgrade:

```composer remove ernestdefoe/fbsfb
composer require ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation
php flarum migrate           # runs the settings copy migration
php flarum cache:clear
php flarum extension:enable ernestdefoe-gridiron-nation```

The settings migration copies every `fbsfb.*` and `ernestdefoe-fbsfb.*`

row in your settings table to the new `gridiron-nation.*` and

`ernestdefoe-gridiron-nation.*` prefixes. Legacy rows stay in place so

a downgrade picks them back up cleanly.

---

## License

MIT © [ernestdefoe](https://github.com/ernestdefoe)

gridiron-nation 2.1.1

What's Changed

• style(widgets): bolder pigskin wash + white title text on widget headers
• style(widgets): black text outline on light-mode widget headers
• style(widgets): bump light-mode widget header outline from 1px to 2px

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.0...2.1.1

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.2

What's Changed

• style(tags): bigger FA icons on tag pills + TagLabel

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.1...2.1.2

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.3

What's Changed

• fix(hero,tags): scoreboard counts + wide conference-glyph spacing

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.2...2.1.3

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.4

What's Changed

• fix(tags): force tag-icon spacing over flarum/tags + widen mobile nav
• style(index): wider showcase-card content area on desktop
• style(discussion): wider right-column (controls + scrubber) on desktop

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.3...2.1.4

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.5

What's Changed

• fix(build): drop CSS min()/calc(min()) that broke the LESS compile

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.4...2.1.5

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.6

What's Changed

• style(discussion): revert column widening, center scrubber instead
• fix(tags): force TagsPage grid icon spacing over flarum/tags

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.5...2.1.6

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.7

What's Changed

• style(hero): stop the two decoration glyphs from overlapping
• style(sidebar): widen desktop left nav so conference names aren't cut off

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.6...2.1.7

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.8

What's Changed

• fix(sidebar): exclude primary button from nav-link wrap rules
• fix(sidebar): scope nav-widen to IndexPage-nav, not all .Page-sidebar

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.7...2.1.8

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.9

What's Changed

• style(hero): flush discussion-hero decorations to the far-right edge
• style(hero): 10px right inset on discussion-hero decorations

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.8...2.1.9

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.10

What's Changed

• style(hero): title above pills, left-aligned, more prominent
• style(hero): make discussion title bigger and bolder
• fix(hero): bump title selector specificity so size/weight actually apply
• style(hero): bring discussion title size down a notch
• style(hero): bring discussion title size down a bit more
• style(hero): shift decorations further right
• style(hero): shift decorations a bit further right

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.9...2.1.10

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.1.11

What's Changed

• Fix overflowing messages-page nav
• Stack messages-page nav vertically (correct selector .MessagesPage-nav)
• Force nested SelectDropdown in messages nav into a vertical list
• Refine messages nav: compact Send button, flat list, tighter spacing
• Stop hero clipping the Online popover; raise its z-index
• Give DM messages the stadium-ticket chrome + pull the thread up
• Lay messages page out as nav-left / content-right columns
• Revert messages page to stacked layout; just trim the top gap
• Override Page-container gap directly to pull messages content up
• Hide the redundant MessagesPageHero to pull the thread up
• Compact the messages nav rows to lift the thread higher
• Revert messages-page layout overrides; keep only the ticket chrome
• Make messages nav strip full-width like default theme
• Hide MessagesPageHero so the horizontal nav + thread sit at the top
• Trim remaining messages content margin + nav padding
• Force messages container to block stacking at all widths
• Add small top margin so messages nav clears the fixed header
• Restore the Messages hero banner

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.10...2.1.11

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.2.0

What's Changed

• fix: keep wide team-wordmark hero decorations from being cut off
• feat: stronger drop shadow on hero team decorations
• fix: widen welcome-hero scoreboard so long newest-member names aren't cut off
• feat: per-glyph hero decoration inset (measure real ink overflow in JS)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/gridiron-nation/compare/2.1.11...2.2.0

View release on GitHub

gridiron-nation 2.2.1

Hardening release from a code audit — includes a likes-counter fix that matters on non-MySQL databases.

Changes

• Cross-database likes counter: the discussions.likes_count sync no longer uses MySQL-only CAST(... AS SIGNED) raw SQL. It now uses Eloquent's atomic increment()/decrement(), so it works on PostgreSQL and SQLite too (previously a like on those engines threw and left the count permanently stale). Floored at 0.
• Like/unlike listeners are container-resolved (Class@method) — no manual resolve() per event.
• The hero "newest member" field is cached for 5 minutes like the scoreboard counts, so it no longer adds a DB round-trip to every page load; the two ForumResource extenders are merged.
• Live-scores controller injects its Guzzle client instead of constructing one per request.
• Removed an unconditional ini_set('memory_limit') that ran on every web request (it's a CLI/build concern).
• The composer trigger opens the composer via the core component loader instead of a hard-coded .IndexPage-newDiscussion DOM node.
• Removed two unused locale keys.

Safe to update — no migrations.

View release on GitHub