NodeBB's topic list layout is great for written and media-light content, although it is less ideal for categories which predominately feature pictures. I recently ran into this issue with the Pics and Trips category on the OpenBeta Community. While we've made some much-needed TLC and improvements so that topic thumbnails are better handled and displayed, I did not feel they were adequately prioritised for this particular category.

So I wrote the Category Masonry plugin for NodeBB!

In brief:

• Configurable; either by category or by percentage of topics with a topic thumbnail/image
• Overrides the partials/topic_list.tpl template to display cards
• Works with custom themes (will correctly override the theme's category.tpl, or the base theme's category.tpl if your theme does not have its own)