@psychobunny said:

Don't think either this, category info masonry, or metro tiles plugin were ever compatible with Lavender - mainly because the code takes the home.tpl from vanilla and not lavender

Need to think of a more brilliant way to figure this out, but for the shoutbox specifically you might be able to just replace the motd directly or something (since you don't modify the rest of home.tpl)

Create the widget thing! I'll see if I can have a go at replacing the motd... Any tips on how I would go about that? Add a custom api route for home?

Edit:
Realised I could just change the meta.config.motd... Problem is that it's wrapped inside the motd though. I could take it out with the clientside JS but that's not very nice.