Hi again,
This is my second time posting and after a really helpful discussion with other members, I’d like to once again ask a question regarding my nonprofit’s new forum. We are trying to create a space for makers to talk about COVID and share resources. We were toying around with the idea of hierarchies in a general resources category and I wanted to know if you can created subcategories in subcategories. Please see below for an example.
TL;DR: I want to do Option 2, but is that possible?
Also I tried on my self-hosted forum and it is not possible; I have an error message if I try to do so:
You can't nest a subcategory under another
At present I believe three level categories is only being used for enterprise customers. It definitely introduces a world of noise and complexity that most communities just aren’t ready for.
Could you achieve similar depth using tags?
Hi @Stephen and @Canapin thanks for your replies.
We are not using enterprise at the moment. We tossed around the idea of tags as a filtering method and topics, if need be this is what we will do. It would have just been nicer for our info organization to have that capability.
All the best,
Hannah
Do you have lots of content that people do not want to see? If not, you’re just making work.
I believe that there is a hidden site setting that needs to be enabled to turn them on.
I’ve found a really nice solution to alleviate at least some of the strain on categories is to see if you can use groups. Have you tried setting up groups yet? It is a literal work in progress, but you can see our current use of groups and steal ideas.
I’m hoping it’s called tenth_circle_of_hell
Could anyone here tell me the name of that devilish hidden setting? Even it’s not the preferred way, I would like to show my superiors that it is indeed possible to let categories have “grandchildren” in Discourse 
Welcome back, @lostintime!
The setting you’re looking for is
SiteSetting.max_category_nesting = 3
You can do some searching. It’s not well documented, but I’m pretty sure that some enterprise customers are using this, so it’s a good bet that it works. I have one client that was using it, for a time at least, so it should work for you.
That’s brilliant @pfaffman, thanks! After having set up my language forum on Discourse a couple years ago (it’s still running beautifully) I am now trying to convince my employer to also go with my favourite discussion software They are convinced they need sub-sub-categories …
Where exactly would I be putting this setting, dare I ask?
Thanks!
You need to have access to the server where Discourse is running. If you’re hosted somewhere, you’ll need to ask whoever is running the server to do this for you.
cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
SiteSetting.max_category_nesting = 3
exit
exit
You’ve made my day Jay 
Thank you so much.
We’re self-hosted. My role on the new system will be that of a moderator. I will tell the admins this is what they’re after.
Can we setup categories up to 4 or 5? Jay?
Thank you!
No, that is not possible.
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