I’m building my first Discourse forum. The software and its community are incredible, and it’s a lot to take in.
Just for edification, what are some differences between a Category and a sub-Category, internally or otherwise? Beyond the organizing function that we see, and the definition that a sub-Category has a parent Category, is there more going on here? Let’s say we have two Categories, “Yin” and “Yang”. We make Yin a sub-Category by moving it under Yang. Or, we make Yang a sub-Category under Yin. Is swapping their heirarchical location the only thing that is happening during these operations? Are there other (attribute) differences between a stand-alone Category, a sub-Category, and a parent Category (speaking in a general sense, not at the db level)? I assume that a parent knows who its kids are, and vice-versa.
Access settings have a hierarchical structure where sub-categories cannot be more permissive than their parent categories. You will get an error message when you attempt a configuration that goes against this:
Usually, when you look at all topics from a category, you also see the topics in the subcategories. For example, when you look at Announcements, you also see the topics in Announcements > Blog. Of course, you can use the subcategory filter and select “no subcategories” to exclude them or change the category settings so that subcategories are hidden by default. But in general, a parent category can also work to group several subcategories, like for example Documentation does.
