# Simplified category setup

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplified-category-setup/394971
**Category:** Announcements
**Created:** [February 3, 2026, 3:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplified-category-setup/394971 "2026-02-03T15:11:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

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### Author: ![lindsey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/lindsey/32/318210_2.png) [@lindsey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lindsey)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2026, 3:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplified-category-setup/394971/1 "2026-02-03T15:11:01Z")

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Whether you’re new to Discourse or looking to expand your existing community, we want to make it easy for you to create categories to support meaningful conversation. To that end, we’re introducing a significant improvement to the category creation process, which should make this process easier for most use cases, while still allowing for more advanced configuration where required.

In this topic, we’ll review the major changes and share how you can start using this simplified system today.

## 🔬 What’s changed

Let’s walk through some of the changes to category creation.

 ![Simplified category creation](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/b/8/db8403b29116980bb7c59d7856e6792d23c95334.png)

> **Old category creation, for reference**
>
> ![Old category creation](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/8/4/7/847526d7d814e05403ad10012ebe208c945c5deb.png)

### 1. Focused fields

With our goal of making typical category creation simpler, we’ve trimmed down this initial page to just the bare essentials.

### 2. Updated color selection

The new color selector (i.e. dropper button) shows the background color and the text color. \[1\]

 ![Category color picker](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/3/c/f/3cfce75a01f278fe082b199241fba2f245e73941.png)

We’ve also tucked away the suggested colors and previously selected colors (indicated by a checkmark) because we felt these added noisiness to the category creation page.

 ![Category color swatches](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/6/a/f/6af9eedbbf55b20b98454ab294432bda4c1ad919.png)

### 3. Improved style inputs

The **Style** inputs were tidied up to take up less space, while making the various options (i.e. Icon, Emoji, or Square) more visible.

### 4. Simple access controls

Discourse offers a lot of flexibility around category access, but we wanted to give you a simple version to cover most use cases. With this new system, you can easily decide between:

- **Public** access, so everyone can see, create topics, and post replies \[2\]
- **Private** access, where you specify the group(s) that should be able to see, create topics, and post replies

If you need more flexible permissions, the quick link points you to the advanced settings area (see next section!) where you can adjust access.

 ![Simplified category access selection](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/7/8/4/784b0439f4f93008856745a3b15bc87568327144.png)

### 5. Advanced settings access

For most categories, you should have everything you need on this main page. However, if you need access to all the various settings we have to offer, select the **Advanced settings** toggle to expose all the extra options.

 ![Advanced settings toggle](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/3/9/d39a8466a64c057ef5950f9513116ff4a86fe661.png)

Most of this is unchanged, with two exceptions:

- **Category slug** has moved from the main page to the **Settings** tab.
- **Text color** has moved from the main page to the **Appearance** tab.

## ⚙ Turning on simplified category creation in your community

**For now, this is considered an experimental change!** We’re welcoming your feedback, which will help us make improvements so that this can soon become the new default experience for category creation.

To turn this on, head to the **[Upcoming changes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/introducing-upcoming-changes-a-system-to-manage-new-features-and-changes-to-existing-functionality-in-your-community/392894)** page in your admin area (`/admin/config/upcoming-changes`) and find the **Enable simplified category creation** item. Update the **Enabled for** … field to opt your site in to this new design:

 !["Enable simplified category creation" upcoming change item](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/7/3/7/7379b04cdb198765e545a82fd2b7fa48c20d55b4.png)

**Note:** This Upcoming Change item doesn’t change who can create categories — if you set it to “Everyone”, only admins (and moderators, if you have enabled `moderators manage categories and groups`) will see it since they’re the only ones who can create categories.

## 📣 What do you think?

We’d love to hear what you think of this new category creation process. Did it make creating a category easier? Are there any other improvements you think we could make here to keep making this process simpler?

* * *

1. We automatically set to either white or black based on what’s most accessible on your selected background. You can set your own text color on the Appearance tab, shown when toggling on Advanced Settings. 

2. To be precise, everyone who can see your community and everyone who can post topics / replies in your community can do so in this category. If your community is private, any logged-in user can see and post topics / replies in the category; if your community is public, any site visitor can see the category, but only logged-in users can post topics / replies in it

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplified-category-setup/394971)._