The reason for this is because of the marketing strategy for the client. They have the same exact category/label, and want the content rendered exactly:
“Wireless Acess Points” <— parent category,
child category ----> “Autonomous APS”
“Network Ecosystem”
child category ----->" Autonomous APs" <— same exact content.
Yet in another place on the same site, they have the same exact content rendered but just under another umbrella category. Can anyone think of any way to do this? I thought it might be impossible, permalinks are just redirecting A to B, this would almost “publish” the categories into both sections.
i.e. why, specifically, does it need to be “rendered” in two places? Are these places both in the discourse client? is one on a seperate site (pulling topics via ajax?) What’s the marketing strategy?
This is perhaps a dev topic, unless you’re looking to hire someone to advise you on this?
thanks for the response. I guess if it doesn’t natively exist or someone had already done it, then yes i was looking to possibly hire someone. Just started the thread and see the feedback.
The reasoning for doing so is exactly as I described, my apologies for the vagueness. Basically the product itself ( a category ), is under two different parent categories at the same time ( just using as example ) the marketing strategy is that they are offering this product in different product categories.
Wireless Networking <— parent
Autonomous APs <— child category
Another main category
Networking Ecosystem <— parent
Autonomous APs <— same exact content, but rendered under two categories.
I understand that discourse forums may not have been designed for it, but that is the businesses requirements.
I do agree with @angus that if you’re looking to scope something it should be in dev. I’ve moved it for you When you settle on needing to hire someone, post a job with a budget in marketplace!
If this were my client, and I was just given what you’ve described, I would push back a bit on the need to do this first. We do this a fair bit at Pavilion.
One solution here is to use Discourse’s taxonomies more effectively. For example, why not have Autonomous APs as a seperate parent category, or potentially as a tag instead of a category. Both solutions would require no modifications.
They may be resistant to this approach initially as it doesn’t map with their existing product hierarchy, but then you could explain how their discourse category structure does not necessarily need to exactly map their product hierarchy in a top-down fashion.
The goal with a category structure is to allow their users to find content, which is not necessarily achieved by matching their product hierarchy.
You could also play with tags by renaming the tag dropdown menu “all tags” to “Products”, you can add a tag icon or even a customized image before the tag name with some css. This will not break after upgrades and it could be enough to convince a client this is the best solution.
But I get that some clients can be stubborn even when an idea is not the best one, and infinitely harder to realize
If the content is mostly about products that they want to group into product categories, then you could also think (in variation to @Steven’s suggestion) to map these umbrella categories as tags and use Discourse’s categories just for the products.
When you settle on needing to hire someone, post a job with a budget in