# Large number of forums / categories / groups?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [May 1, 2019, 11:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630 "2019-05-01T23:49:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chriskuta](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chriskuta)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2019, 11:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/1 "2019-05-01T23:49:05Z")
I’ve seen this asked a few times over the years here, but haven’t been able to find a follow up. The use case I’m investigating is having a large number of areas that represent a school, which house discussions for each school. There is no requirement to restrict access permission to these areas, other than perhaps an option to “join”. Also having sub-categories within each of these areas would be required.
I’ve noted that a large number of categories / sub-categories in discourse is not recommended, while a large number of groups might be an option? Although it seems groups would need to be linked to categories anyway?
Running multisite instances seems like overkill given the overall traffic would not exceed a “normal sized forum”. In fact I suspect a large number of these “areas” might never see any traffic ever, yet they need to exist so they can be found if required.
> [@Most effective way of creating large amount of sub-forums](https://meta.discourse.org/t/most-effective-way-of-creating-large-amount-of-sub-forums/83583):
>
> Hi, We’re looking at implementing discourse into an existing application which has a large userbase broken down into schools at the nationwide level. In an ideal world, each school with have its own private “sub-forum” of which only users from that school can post, which each sub-forum having approx 3 categories (always the same). If this setup something thats possible in discourse and if so whats the best way of implementing this assuming there may be thousands of schools/sub-forums? From a…
> [@What's the maximum number of categories we can have?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whats-the-maximum-number-of-categories-we-can-have/57022):
>
> I’m considering using Discourse as the backend for my website and app, but I haven’t seen any documentation on its scaling limits. What’s the maximum number of categories we can have? Is it 1000? 10,000? 100,000? I plan to heavily use the API and create a custom frontend for both web and mobile. Part of this is programmatically creating a new Category whenever a user wants to. So it’s more of a backend systems question than the UI. For example, will the /categories.json endpoint scale? I…
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### Author:  [@chriskuta](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chriskuta)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2019, 3:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/2 "2019-05-02T03:48:38Z")
Just adding - would using a tagging solution something like _state.suburb.type_ be possible with 10,000+ pre-defined tags? At least this way content could be filtered / aggregated by schools, we just need a way to automate the tagging process when messages are created.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/3 "2019-05-02T23:43:14Z")
Hey Chris – good to hear from you.
You are correct in assuming that groups isn’t the right approach here. Groups don’t segregate content as such – they drive permissions but still need to be attached to a category.
A large number of sub/categories is fine (performance-wise) until you get to the thousands, but from a psychological/UX perspective it’s not great to have numerous options – people just don’t know where to go… paradox of choice.
You can build out a rich architecture using tags and tag groups. Check out [Set up structured tagging with tag groups and category tag restrictions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tags-category-restrictions-tag-groups-relationships/48260) and [It’s Time We Talked About Tags](https://blog.discourse.org/2017/10/its-time-we-talked-about-tags/)
Will the discussions within each school be similar? i.e. will every school talk about teachers, uniforms and sports (for e.g.) or will they all talk about different things?
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### Author:  [@chriskuta](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chriskuta)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2019, 9:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/4 "2019-05-04T21:14:07Z")
Hey.. thanks for the reply and advice, will check out those links. Yes, the structure of each school will be the same, although I’d assume some schools might want to setup their own boards.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2019, 1:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/5 "2019-05-06T01:15:02Z")
No worries. If you’re still on the fence after reading up on tags, let us know.
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### Author:  [@AndyWhite247](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AndyWhite247)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2020, 6:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/6 "2020-07-05T06:14:18Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> they drive permissions but still need to be attached to a category.
Not sure I understand @HAWK? We have groups that are not attached to a category
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> You can build out a rich architecture using tags and tag groups.
Fully agree with this. I have found that the natural tendency is to set up categories at will. My view is to keep them to an absolute minimum and then use tags to “guide” the user
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2020, 11:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/7 "2020-07-05T23:29:59Z")
> [@AndyWhite247](#):
>
> We have groups that are not attached to a category
For sure, but they don’t control any content gating in that case.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2024, 10:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/large-number-of-forums-categories-groups/116630/8 "2024-02-19T22:04:42Z")
> [@What's the maximum number of categories we can have?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/whats-the-maximum-number-of-categories-we-can-have/57022/27):
>
> Just a brief update here. While it’s still a work in progress, we have been working on making Discourse scale to even more categories and there is now an experimental site setting called lazy load categories groups available to opt into this behavior: Those willing to live with rough edges are welcome to try it out, but we aren’t quite at the point where we’re looking for too much additional feedback yet. Once we are, we’ll make create a topic in #annou…