In this episode, we start scaffolding out the new discussion form for our forum. The main goal here is to get the form's layout in place—stuck to the bottom of the page just like you see on popular forums—even though we're not wiring up the show/hide button yet. That part will come later.
First, we set up a reusable FixedFormWrapper component that handles all the layout and styling for forms fixed to the bottom of the page. The idea is to use this not just for creating new discussions, but also for replies later on, so we can keep things DRY.
Next, we build the CreateDiscussionForm component, which sits inside the forum's main layout. This ensures the form sticks around no matter what forum page you're on, making it accessible everywhere.
We then jump into styling: making the form fixed, adding a white background, a nice border, setting widths and padding, and making sure it looks good and is centered like the rest of the content.
After that, we set up slots for flexible content: header, main (for the form itself), and the button area. For the actual form fields, we build out the title input, the topic select dropdown, a textarea for the post body, and finally a button to submit. For each field, we take advantage of existing components (input, select, textarea, button) to keep things tidy and consistent with the rest of the app.
By the end, we have a fully styled and reusable discussion form, ready to be plugged into other pages (like the reply form) and to be toggled in the future. The functionality (like actually submitting or showing/hiding the form) comes next, but this episode is all about the foundational structure and layout.