# Integrating Discourse with a larger social network app? **URL:** \ **Category:** Development\ **Created:** [Février 3, 2016, 8:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/integrating-discourse-with-a-larger-social-network-app/38993 "2016-02-03T20:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)\ **Post date:** [Février 3, 2016, 9:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/integrating-discourse-with-a-larger-social-network-app/38993/4 "2016-02-03T21:46:44Z")
It took me a while to wrap my head around Discourse’s organization and how to coerce it into something that I could use to teach classes. > [@Talin](#): > > Users can belong to one or more collaborations (or “group” if you prefer). Discourse calls groups of topics (top level posts) “categories”. “groups” are groups of people. Groups can be used to limit permissions on categories. > [@Talin](#): > > Each collaboration can have multiple topics. Each category can have many topics. No problem. > [@Talin](#): > > Members of a collaboration can view existing topics or create new ones. The permissions system handles this. You can also create categories where some people can only view (they can reply, but it has to become a new topic in adifferent category), or only view and reply to topics in the category. > [@Talin](#): > > Topics can be sent to more than one collaboration as well as to private individuals. You’d need to find a creative solution here. Topics exist in only one category. You can move things between categories. You can also use tags as an organizer. Users can watch tags. People can invite people to join or notice a discussion with @username. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/integrating-discourse-with-a-larger-social-network-app/38993)._