# Rule-based virtual category

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/rule-based-virtual-category/374247
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** tags, tag-groups
**Created:** [July 15, 2025, 6:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rule-based-virtual-category/374247 "2025-07-15T06:02:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

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### Author: ![volanar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/volanar/32/318163_2.png) [@volanar](https://meta.discourse.org/u/volanar)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 6:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rule-based-virtual-category/374247/1 "2025-07-15T06:02:47Z")

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This revolutionary feature can solve the problem of a single topic being assigned to multiple categories.  
This also partially solves the problem of low category nesting to create a convenient community structure.  
This feature is used in e-commerce to create summary categories based on rules (such as product attributes). This allows you to have one product in multiple categories.

In discourse, a virtual category can be created (or added to an existing one) based on tags or a group of tags.

It is necessary to make a new setting in the category settings.  
When you select the “virtual category” checkbox, a window opens with a selection of tags or a group of tags, based on which topics with such a tag are automatically added to this category.

For example, we have a category about cats. We want to put one breed of cats in a separate category, but we want to leave the topics in the old category. We create a new category and based on the tag, for example, Maine Coon, the category will automatically be filled with topics with the Maine Coon tag, there can be a large number of them. This is one example of use, in reality there are many more.

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