In a discussion regarding the Free Discourse plan, user ice.d suggested allowing free forum administrators to create groups for specific topics of interest, such as Tech or Music. They argued that restricting this feature forces users to upgrade, comparing the experience to a car dealership providing a test drive without wheels ice.d, ondrej.
Respondents ToddZ and pfaffman clarified a fundamental misunderstanding: Categories are for organizing posts by topic, while Groups are for organizing users to control permissions and access. ToddZ noted that the free plan already allows up to 10 public categories, which likely meets the original poster’s need for topic separation.
User pacharanero highlighted that this confusion between categories and groups is a common issue, often stemming from users’ mental models of platforms like Facebook or WhatsApp. While some, like NateDhaliwal and mcwumbly, acknowledged that groups are valuable for complex communities or private access, they agreed that for many forums, categories suffice.
The discussion concluded with ice.d countering that while users can manually mute categories, not everyone will do so, suggesting a need for group-based filtering. Others, like Canapin, pointed out that users can manage their own notification settings per category.
My immediate thoughts would be that I agree because I don’t see the logic why a small community wouldn’t need groups to me this should be a basic. Its like a car dealership giving you a test drive without the wheels fitted to the car.
However, from a business perspective, I know that the point is that you should see what you miss out on to nudge you to upgrade and become a customer - you’re not going to get a free feature rich version.
I just think there are other things that are currently restricted which are understandable but yeah groups is a basic as nearly everything is managed by groups.
True i wasnt expecting a feature rich experince but at least let the groups even in a free trial you have group features and groups can be a staple in many forums
Topics of interest = Categories. The free plan allows you to create up to 10 public Categories for areas of discussion.
Groups are for segments of users, and they enable different permissions, access to private categories, and messaging within user groups. These are more advanced features you’d need to upgrade for.
Then again, groups aren’t an ‘essential’ part of the forum, in a sense that the forum can still function without groups.
But that aside, IMO groups should be included. On the other hand, category read/write settings also cannot be changed on the free plan. Do groups have much use, then? It can be argued from sides, I think.
On this very forum, we make extensive use of categories – we do use groups too, but only for very specific purposes. Most of the people here are not part of any custom groups.
Very large forums can run effectively with limited or no use of groups.
That said, they are valuable – especially for organizations or communities with greater complexity or who limit access to certain areas for different reasons – but that’s stuff we believe is worth investing more in if you need it (whether your time or your money).
This does highlight one of the perennial issues I’ve found deploying Discourse among even technical user-bases - they fundamentally misunderstand the distinction between Categories and Groups. Every. Time.
This seems to be caused by people’s mental model of what a ‘group’ is - they have learned this from the way Facebook Groups, Google Groups and WhatsApp Groups work - the Group is the place where the discussion happens, and honestly trying to get people to learn this anew for Discourse has at times made me borderline murderous.
Yep, we hear the same thing. This is an opportunity to simplify things staring us in the face.
How to do so isn’t abundantly clear though – will take some focused effort to unravel things and chart a path forward given the state were starting from.
To me, the way categories and groups work in Discourse seems perfectly natural…. except, I’ve never really used fb or google groups so…. guess that is why and I used whatsapp but only briefly and realized we had to make a group to use it but that didn’t associate Discourse groups with that nomenclature when using Discourse.
not to go to off topic, to address the op, I think the free plan is super generous and quite capable of launching a small community and serving it’s needs until it becomes established enough to warrant spending time/money to gain more capabilities.
The only caveat would be if the planned community was intending to be used for something in addition to a purely community forum type use. (paid membership, e-store, ticket system for support ect.)
I think I should read the whole topic before replying. . . .
I think you might misunderstand that categories are collections of posts and that Groups are collections of users that can be used to control who has access to categories.
You can create those categories for each topic of interest. That’s not a problem.
What you can’t do is keep the people who are interested in Music from also seeing topics about Tech.
this.
