# Total posts on categories page should count subcategories
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 10, 2019, 5:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705 "2019-10-10T17:09:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@markwill](https://meta.discourse.org/u/markwill)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2019, 5:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/1 "2019-10-10T17:09:53Z")
I have a two-level hierarchy for my forum - three high-level categories, each with three sub-categories. The category page shows this structure quite well but the “posts / month” figure only seems to be for the top-level categories.
Since the majority of topics go in the second-level categories, this means that my forum looks kinda dead, based on these numbers! For example, I might have, say, 50 posts under the second-level categories for a particular top-level category. But my categories page says something like “3 / month”. Not good 🙂
Is there any way to have the topic costs include those in nested categories?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/2 "2019-10-12T22:05:40Z")
I suggest using a flatter hierarchy.
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### Author:  [@markwill](https://meta.discourse.org/u/markwill)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2019, 10:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/3 "2019-10-12T22:56:06Z")
Thank you, @codinghorror. However, I have had this hierarchy in place since day one for my business and all my content, lessons, webinars, courses, etc are built around this framework. I expose this across multiple platforms without any issues, except this one. Plus, if it was any flatter it would be … flat (I only have two levels).
So I’d rather find a way to change the technology to reflect the business, not the other way around.
Do you happen to know if this is “just” a theme-level issue? If so, I guess I could figure out how to change the theme to remove the number.
Any even better approach would be some way to query on the total number of topics in a category, including sub-categories. If so, I could maybe adjust the theme to show that. But I am guessing that’s not available - but would love to be told I am wrong 🙂
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### Author:  [@Emmawill890](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Emmawill890)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/4 "2019-10-16T22:49:04Z")
Hello Mark,
I was able to solve this problem by using CSS. I used display:none; to hide the relevant elements. It’s a bit of a work around but for small changes like this it works.
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### Author:  [@markwill](https://meta.discourse.org/u/markwill)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2019, 10:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/5 "2019-10-16T22:57:29Z")
I like creative thinking 🙂 Good idea Emma and that solved my issue. Thank you again.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2019, 11:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/total-posts-on-categories-page-should-count-subcategories/130705/6 "2019-11-15T23:04:49Z")
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