# Require a category for every post
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [2월 4, 2015, 5:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810 "2015-02-04T17:06:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jbwilliams1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jbwilliams1)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/1 "2015-02-04T17:06:36Z")
Is this a current/wanted/planned for feature? If you remove the “Uncategorized” category, will the category just default to the next first available category?
Just wondering what is behind that
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:14오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/6 "2015-02-04T17:14:53Z")
If you want category to be required, turn on the required category setting.
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:17오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/8 "2015-02-04T17:17:05Z")
Since there seems to be “delete” happy, can you better explain what you are seeking? Are you looking to require a category or prevent topics from being created in Uncategorized? Are you looking for a solution that is for Members only or Staff as well?
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:54오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/9 "2015-02-04T17:54:43Z")
Set “allow uncategorized topics” to false in the admin settings.
Do **not** attempt to remove or set security on the uncategorized category.
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### Author:  [@jbwilliams1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jbwilliams1)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:54오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/10 "2015-02-04T17:54:52Z")
Mostly I was wondering if I remove the “Uncategorized” category if I could make the first option be “Select a category” and if the poster does not do that it warns them that it s required. Currently the design for this is not very intuitive and many of my users have missed the category option entirely, so I find myself spending about half the time on the forum categorizing posts for my users.
I’m not finding the required category setting Jeff referred to, but I will keep looking
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### Author:  [@jbwilliams1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jbwilliams1)
#### Post date: [2월 4, 2015, 5:55오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/11 "2015-02-04T17:55:24Z")
Thanks for at least telling me where it was 😀
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### Author:  [@sashko](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sashko)
#### Post date: [4월 6, 2016, 9:46오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/12 "2016-04-06T21:46:51Z")
To turn off ‘Uncategorized’, it says you need to categorize all existing posts. I think on the Meteor forums there might be many hundreds of thousands of these - is there a simple way to categorize them all?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [4월 6, 2016, 10:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/13 "2016-04-06T22:06:06Z")
> [@sashko](#):
>
> To turn off ‘Uncategorized’, it says you need to categorize all existing posts. I think on the Meteor forums there might be many hundreds of thousands of these
That is not a problem, if you want to move all of the uncategorized topics to different category, let us know what needs moving and we can run the query.
Alternatively you could just give uncategorized a name. What is the driver for this change?
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### Author:  [@sashko](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sashko)
#### Post date: [4월 7, 2016, 2:46오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/14 "2016-04-07T02:46:50Z")
Perhaps it doesn’t work the way I think it does, but I use categories to ignore a certain subset of posts by excluding them from my front page. When users don’t put in the effort to add a category, this filter doesn’t work anymore, and I would rather not ignore all uncategorized posts because often they can be pretty important.
If `uncategorized` is turned off, will users get some default category, or will they be required to select a category for new topics? That would be ideal.
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [4월 7, 2016, 10:28오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/15 "2016-04-07T10:28:23Z")
> [@sashko](#):
>
> If uncategorized is turned off, will users get some default category, or will they be required to select a category for new topics?
They will be required to choose one, if creating the topic from Latest or a non-category related page.
If they are on a category/latest page, that category will default (unless you use the keyboard shortcut for creating a category – which may be a bug, very low priority one though and hasn’t been reported to my knowledge).
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### Author:  [@Idan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Idan)
#### Post date: [6월 29, 2016, 12:38오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/16 "2016-06-29T12:38:40Z")
In my installation, the “allow uncategorized topics” is set to false (unchecked), but still, when I create a topic without selecting a category in the drop down, it still submitted the topic without notifying the user that he has to select a category. The topic appears in the list with blank text.
Is there an option to require a user to select a category from the list?
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [6월 29, 2016, 3:27오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/17 "2016-06-29T15:27:30Z")
Yes, and `allow uncategorized topics` is the right setting for this.
Since this is your install, your’re most likely an admin, and admins are allowed to bypass most rules 😉
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### Author:  [@Idan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Idan)
#### Post date: [6월 29, 2016, 3:29오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/18 "2016-06-29T15:29:42Z")
Yes, that was it. Thank you.
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [12월 4, 2025, 11:33오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/require-a-category-for-every-post/24810/19 "2025-12-04T11:33:31Z")