Create hundreds or thousands groups/categories?

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Create hundreds or thousands groups/categories?

The discussion revolves around the feasibility of creating a large number of groups/categories in Discourse. CamilleRoux initially inquires about creating a private space for each training session, considering groups and categories. sam responds that having many groups is fine, but having over 500 categories can be problematic, and 5000 categories would be unmanageable.

sam suggests using group PMs for discussion spaces instead of categories. mikechristopher asks about archiving categories to maintain post counts without impacting the forum, and sam recommends using mass tagging and category changes.

The conversation also touches on the topic of subcategories, with Mittineague clarifying that they are essentially categories with a parent category. ukankal asks about the implications of having many categories, and sam explains the potential problems with admin access and interface usability.

Methods for grouping topics discussed include Categories & sub-categories and Tags, with Mittineague noting that permission settings can also be used to affect visibility.

1

Hi,

I’m the founder of a training company. I’m thinking to create a private space (a category?) for each session.
What the simple way to do that and is it a good idea to use Discourse for that? I should create a group and a category per session, should I?

Thanks

2

Tons and tons of groups should be fine, more than 500 or so categories is not great and 5000 categories will be pain-town.

3

Thanks!
What if I want these groups get their own discussion space ?
Instead of categories, I invite each group to a specific topic ? (and a create a category per course, not per session)

4

Well if you allow the group users to PM the group, they can use group PMs for this purpose and it should work great.

5

with regards to having tons of categories - is there an easy way to archive the category in that the post counts etc are kept but cleaned up to the point it wont have an impact on the forum itself as we also have a lot of private groups and categories for a different nature. In that they are a private group of select people for only 30 days.

6

not really, but I you could use mass tagging and mass category changes to handle this, select all topics in category, move to archive category, add “tag” to denote the old category, delete category.

7

Thanks @sam! I think that may be the way we have to go.

8

Hi @sam,

Is 30 categories same as 3 categories with 10 sub-categories each when you are considering no. of categories?

9

I guess it depends on what you mean by “same”
AFAIK sub-categories are basically categories that have a parent category.

10

Thanks @Mittineague, that clears my doubt.

Also, what are the various ways you could group topics.
Below are the ones I am aware of. Please add if there are any other ways of grouping.

Categories & sub-categories.
Tags.

11

That’s about it in terms of organization.
Permission settings can be used to affect who sees what where, but that would be more perceived organization than actual organization

12

An easy way to understand this problem is, imagine you have 10K categories.

Every admin has access to 10K categories.

  • When they compose a new topic they can pick from the 10k categories.
  • Hamburger menu contains categories, how is that going to look for them?
  • The /categories page can become enormous and needs to ship huge amounts of data just to render.

It become a crippling problem for admins, if secured right and nobody can access more than say 100 groups then it may work, but admin would have a brutal experience.