[image] this issue has existed for months today the forum has about 405 categories

I suspect it’s just that your server is too slow to accomplish the task. Hundreds of categories isn’t really recommended. The way I’ve sorted hundreds of categories before was in rails.

[image] pfaffman: I suspect it’s just that your server is too slow to accomplish the task. Ah – this problem was actually why I chose the IONOS VPS L. Previously I found better performance with the IONOS Data Center Designer, where I was also using a VPS. I’ve never experienced the Dedicated Core offering, which could potentially null this issue, but I believe the Designer VPS had faster NVMe and maybe higher per-core turbo. [image] pfaffman: Hundreds of categories isn’t really recommended. The UI loading of the composer’s category selector is slow, but that encourages people to browse into the desired category first, IMHO. [image] pfaffman: The way I’ve sorted hundreds of categories before was in rails. Nice - I think we’re into the command line vs. UI discussion again :rofl:

Here’s something I recommended to someone else (that I still haven’t tested). [image] Ordering categories is quite glitched when the numbers get high Bug Yeah. I once wrote some code to alphabetize them at the rails console, I think, but I don’t see it at hand. You can probably get https://ask.discourse.com/ or some other AI to give you some code to do it. . .. Well, I couldn’t. This might work, but I didn’t try it. cats = Category.where("parent_category_id is not null").pluck(:parent_category_id).uniq cats.each do |cat| subs = Category.where(parent_category_id: cat.id) subs_sorted = subs.sort_by { |c| c.name.downcase } pos = 10 s…

You’re doing some crazy stuff with Discourse, Ethan! :rofl: Were you able to resolve your issue?

Haha thanks Tobias! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: It only happened that one time — I haven’t run any Rails commands or anything like that, just through the UI. The same operation worked after retrying, so it looked like a temporary 502 rather than a lasting issue. Haven’t needed to re-order categories since, so it’s not bothering me now. :slightly_smiling_face:

502 error on Re-Order Categories

Product Support

tobiaseigen (Tobias Eigen) October 6, 2025, 6:40pm 5

You’re doing some crazy stuff with Discourse, Ethan!

Were you able to resolve your issue?

Topic		Replies	Views
502 error when trying to save the categories order Bug	7	720	March 25, 2021
Error 422 when reordering categories Product Support	4	1154	September 5, 2023
Reordering Categories Produces Error 422 Bug	18	2827	May 18, 2024
502 errors when renaming large (by topic count) categories Bug	31	2484	November 26, 2020
Reorder Categories behaving strangely Bug	15	1604	April 12, 2019

502 error on Re-Order Categories

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