I’m trying to clean up and streamline our site. I got rid of a bunch of categories, which only siloed discussions. I’m trying to move truly group-specific discussions into groups. Is there a way to add a dropdown for groups that is similar to the ones for categories and tags shown in the image below?
I’ve tried to search for an answer, but I don’t know how to refer to this part of the page (below the menu and the header and above posts and category list)
Thanks for any suggestions.
No.
Groups is not an attribute of Topic, or rather: Categories contain Topics, but Groups do not contain Topics.
You could make a Category for each collection of Groups you want, then only show those Categories to those Groups via Security settings of each Category
There’s even a nifty couple of add-ons to make a homepage Category for each Group.
e.g. Discourse Category Home 🏠
(The Theme Component is linked in the plugin Topic)
Thanks for the response. I think that would put me right back where I started, but using categories in that way requires way too much user education.
I guess I’m misunderstanding the purpose and value of groups…back to the drawing board. 
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Groups is an arbitrary set of Users.
It allows you to bunch people.
You can then use those Group definitions to define access to Categories and other functionality.
You can also do things like add a flair, a title (to highlight site staff for example).
You can also combine Groups with the Subscription plugin to create a Paid Membership Group that gets enhanced access and functionality.
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Question for you @Marty_Downs
Say a user logs into your site and sees this “Groups Dropdown”.
- What exactly would they see in that list? Every Group they are a member of?
- If you show every Group that the user might not be a member of, what relevance would the other entries have?
- Can you describe how the Topics would be filtered based on a selection?
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@merefield I guess I envisioned that groups they are a member of would show in black and groups they could be a member of would show in grey. Clicking on the group would take them to the group page (or the join/description page in the case of groups they are not yet members of).
But I see your point that the dropdowns are operating as filters for topics, so a groups dropdown in that location could be confusing. Still, I think groups are not generally visible enough.
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