SMF's categories vs Discourse's categories

In SMF a category is just a container for boards, i.e. you can not post anything in a category, you can only post in a Board or a sub-board. SMF allows for unlimited sub-boards.

In Discourse you can create topics in categories and sub-categories (two levels). To dig more, you use tags.

Assuming a forum is moved from SMF to Discourse is correct to assume the following will happen? For instance in Simple Machines Community Forum - Index

Category: Simple Machines
 Board: News and Updates 
  Child (sub) board: Archives

In Discourse:

  • “Simple Machines” will become a category
  • “News and updates” will become a sub-category of the above
  • “Archives” will dissapear and all topics in it will be tagged with the word “Archives”? and all topics there will belong to “News and Updates”

Reason I am asking this is to prepare my forum’s structure for possible migration to Discourse.

Thanks!

After doing this, you can amend the script to “Archive Topic” on Discourse.

Hi Rafael, maybe the “Archives” name is not a good example. I just wanted to know what exactly happens with sub-sub-sub-category from SMF or any other traditional bulletin board when migrated to Discourse. Thanks.

Well we don’t have more than 2 levels deep categories, so it makes sense to reconsider your whole category infrastructure before migrating.

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