# Just how bad is it to have 750 categories

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/just-how-bad-is-it-to-have-750-categories/75206>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [Dezembro 2, 2017, 12:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/just-how-bad-is-it-to-have-750-categories/75206 "2017-12-02T00:42:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**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:** [Dezembro 2, 2017, 12:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/just-how-bad-is-it-to-have-750-categories/75206/1 "2017-12-02T00:42:36Z")

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I’m importing a Ning community about oil rights. The belief is that those who own rights in one county don’t care a whit about what’s happening in other counties.

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/9/0/906ef4e5972150d47b9bc7c6752be8d5f638b436.png)

I’ve read [It’s Time We Talked About Tags](https://blog.discourse.org/2017/10/its-time-we-talked-about-tags/) and paid attention to, I think, every topic about the issue over the past ten months.

There are about 10 general interest categories, and then about 20 state categories and each state has 5-50 counties for a whopping total of something like 750. I’ve tried to figure a way around it, but have failed to find a better solution.

One thing I’ve considered is using groups to limit access to categories so that people would see only the categories they care about then they hit /latest or /top (which I can still do).

The problem with that scenario is that it’s important that search engines be able to see all of the categories.

It seems OK on the test site (4GB DO droplet). /categories loads in 1012.8ms and /latest loads in 726.

Is this a horrible mistake?

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