# Hacking discourse to create sub-sub categories
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [5월 26, 2017, 8:17오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454 "2017-05-26T20:17:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mehal\_Shah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mehal_Shah)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 8:17오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/1 "2017-05-26T20:17:45Z")
Hi folks,
I need to create one additional level of categorization for our forum for [Code.org](http://Code.org). I’d like people to click a category (High School Computer Science), and see a list of our courses (Course 1, Course 2, Course 3), then click Course 1 and see a list of units in the course (Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3). Under each unit, there would be topics.
I know that this isn’t supported out of the box for discourse, so I’m willing to fork discourse and do some hackery on my own. I see a couple of ways of doing this
- Add a method to the list controller - like parent\_category\_category\_subcategory [here](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/controllers/list_controller.rb#L107) and add appropriate routing to it.
- Use tags. People who post topics have their posts tagged with the appropriate unit (somehow - don’t know how yet). Then I add a route for something like c/:parent\_category/:category/:tag that loads topics in a given category with a given tag. I’ll also have to change the category view to render tags as subcategories.
Are either of these solutions plausible? Is there a third way I should be considering?
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 8:21오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/2 "2017-05-26T20:21:58Z")
> [@Mehal\_Shah](#):
>
> Then I add a route for something like c/:parent\_category/:category/:tag that loads topics in a given category with a given tag.
[https://meta.discourse.org/tags/c/howto/faq/badge](https://meta.discourse.org/tags/c/howto/faq/badge) works out of the box.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 8:45오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/3 "2017-05-26T20:45:32Z")
> [@Mehal\_Shah](#):
>
> so I’m willing to fork discourse and do some hackery on my own.
no no no … don’t do that .. it will end in huge amounts of pain over time, forks always turn out terrible.
Strongly recommend you simply use tags here, they already work.
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### Author:  [@r3d\_f0x](https://meta.discourse.org/u/r3d_f0x)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 8:59오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/4 "2017-05-26T20:59:53Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> no no no … don’t do that .. it will end in huge amounts of pain over time, forks always turn out terrible.
>
> Strongly recommend you simply use tags here, they already work.
I agree. It seems like a cool idea to fork a project and make it your own and include all the things you want but unless you have a whole team that is willing to work on it long term - and they don’t just have short term enthusiasm for it - it’s going to turn into a nightmare.
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### Author:  [@Mehal\_Shah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mehal_Shah)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 9:58오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/5 "2017-05-26T21:58:44Z")
That’s nice - what I’d want is for that tag to show up in the category view like another topic though.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [5월 26, 2017, 11:49오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/6 "2017-05-26T23:49:26Z")
So you want to make the homepage /tags?
Can you mock up what you think this should look like?
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### Author:  [@Mehal\_Shah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mehal_Shah)
#### Post date: [5월 27, 2017, 12:00오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/7 "2017-05-27T00:00:23Z")
Sure!
Right now, here’s the root of our forum that lists out categories
We click on “Exploring Computer Science” to get the [Exploring Computer Science - Code.org Professional Learning Community](http://forum.code.org/c/ecs) which renders subcategories for each unit
When I click into the subcategory for unit 1 I get this list of topics
However, what I want when I click into the subcategory is something like
Clicking lesson 1 would take the user to a url like [forum.code.org/c/ecs/unit1/t/lesson1](http://forum.code.org/c/ecs/unit1/t/lesson1) - Essentially all topics in the unit1 subcategory that have been tagged with lesson 1
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### Author:  [@scombs](https://meta.discourse.org/u/scombs)
#### Post date: [5월 27, 2017, 10:11오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hacking-discourse-to-create-sub-sub-categories/63454/8 "2017-05-27T22:11:22Z")
Adding a category option for **sort by topic title**
would help for this and other use cases [as discussed previously](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sort-topics-within-category-by-topic-title/56139).
This would allows an easy way to display topics in order based on naming convention, not last edit.