I have a category on my site called MEMEX which is a space for practitioners to chat about tools and techniques that I don’t want to “pollute” the rest of the site (since it’s more active right now than the rest of the site).
I’ve had a dig around in the setting (unfortunately on my phone right now) but am not sure how I can avoid posts from MEMEX appear in the recent posts on the homepage.
I don’t want to hide the category per se, I am happy for people to read & contribute if they want to. I just want new stuff there to only be pushed at participants in that category somehow (either because they have posted there, or because they visit the category page itself).
You can add it to the array in your settings for default categories muted. I’m not entirely sure it hits all your desires, but it’s an easy way to test it out real quick.
Where should I go to find out what muting a category means in practice?
For example, my understanding is that muting a category means no notifications. But if someone posts in a topic in a muted category does that automatically unmute it for that user?
And, if so, does that mean that posts will appear in the latest posts for that user?
I’d really like to understand the consequences before I use muting.
Muting a category removes the category’s topics from the latest topics list. It also removes the category from the categories page. Muting a category does not remove the it from the category dropdown menu.
If a user posts in a muted category, the topic that they have posted in will be unmuted for them - this means that the topic will show up in their latest topics list. Posting in a muted category does not unmute the entire category for the user - it just unmutes the topic they have posted in.
Users can also unmute specific topics in a muted category by setting their notification level for the topic. For example, on my development site I have muted the Site Feedback category. By setting my notification level for a topic in that category to Tracking, that topic now shows up in my latest topics list:
The main problem I see with muting categories is that it makes it difficult for users to find the category. In my opinion, the setting makes sense when it is applied by a user to mute categories that they have no interest in. If you are going to mute a category by default for all users on your site, you’ll have to give some thought to how users are going to find topics in those categories.
Hrmm… this is unfortunate because I don’t want the category to disappear (especially as, if I understand correctly, I am using that page as the home page), or even be particularly hard to discover.
I only want it’s topics not to pollute the latest posts section of the home page.
I’m using Discourse hosted Discourse, I could see instructions for installing the plugin but it seemed to assume you were self-hosting. Is there an option for me too?
For reference I see Plugins in my Admin but there seem to be a limited selection and, apparently, I need to pay a lot more money to get a few other, specified, plugins. I don’t like this.
This feature was originally in core but was since removed, hence the workaround using the plugin.
Discourse team has strong opinions regarding this issue (see the entire topic referenced in my reply) and will probably not support this plugin on the standard hosting tier?
If you absolutely need this functionality you would probably have to either self-host or find a suitable hosting tier/provider that will accomodate the use of this plugin.
