Category Level Extension

pete001

I know that the purpose of Vanilla is to concentrate on discussions but i think a category level extension would be great. For example it would allow you to define the number of levels of categorisation that you wanted so you could have the following:

category 1
.....sub category 1
..........discussions
......sub category 2
..........discussions
category 2
.....sub category 1
..........discussions
category 3
.....discussions

It would be really useful for people who need that 1 or 2 extra levels of categorisation, anyone planning something like this, or any ideas how something like this would be achieved? Would be MUCH appreciated!

lech

For future reference, and not to be rude, don't recreate a topic similar to one you just replied to...

However, I do agree an extension of this nature could be useful to mimic that kind of function similar to what most people might be accustomed to. However, since you brought it up again, I was thinking of ways which could manipulate an existing or new category to give you at least a simple way of sub-grouping categories to a specific parent category while not making that category an option to place threads in. But still making it somewhat useful in terms of display and function (ie: block all in category).

Give the admin the option to still:
1. Name/rename the parent category
2. Asign role permissions to it and sub-categories
3. Asign it either as a parent or child (of which category)

At the moment however this doesn't appear possible to do (easily) with the existing category table and in many cases it would add an extra level or two of complexity to vanilla if it was part of the core or an extension. If an extra row was added to lum_category, say something like "Attributes" to specify an index that's one of the ways I can see it working. But then global category code in general would need to account for it in order to recognize the values.

pete001

Yeah sorry about, i thought what i was asking was slightly different, then when i read it back just now it was the pretty much the same.

Thanks for your help

lech

No problem, it did help me outline some thoughts on the subject though :)

AndrewVos

How about just adding labels to categories? Could even be done with the categories dropdownlist thingy extension. The label would just be gray or something... and all categories in this label would be underneath it...

iwek

OMG....this would be a GREAT extension, I have been playing with vanila for a couple weeks now and I would love to use this but I cannot use it without subcategories or a labeling system....I wonder how hard is it to write this extension....it would definitly bring more people to use this forum

lech

Explaining this is one thing, writing it is another. I've given some thought to it and have barely started something but it requires a small modification on the Vanilla database. The rest now appears to be left to actually manipulating the categories to allow and prevent certain actions to be performed without destroying the rest of Vanilla's usability.

iwek

so this is something that is being worked on or developed? wow, if so, let me know, and I will start to work on moving my forum to vanila

lech

I'm not going to say it's "being worked on" but I am making an effort to "experiment" with the idea. So don't jump in just yet as my extension writing expertise is very weak and I'd rather be styling :)

iwek

I know exactly what you mean...I am the same way...thanks for the reply

iambigred

That would be an awesome extension, although I wouldn't have a clue where to start with creating an extension to do that!

On my Vanilla forum we have a 'Sports and Societies' category, so having 'Football', 'Cricket', 'Rugby'... etc within the 'Sports and Societies' category would be good

Alex

Bergamot

Another point to consider is that, since categories don't change much, you can just make a static HTML page with the categories organized however you want.

iwek

Bergamot.....wow, that would actually work for me, I did not think of that...great point....even though this is more of a hack then the real thing and I am sure for others it wouldn't quite work...but still, good point

iwek

The more I think about it, this hack will not work, will not work for me anyways, hoping this extension will be available soon....

iwek

Sorry to post about this all the time but I wanted to add one more thing, besides the labeling idea, the subforums idea, I also found a "channels" idea on metaforum which is kind of neat/interesting and maybe someone will like that: http://www.blursoft.com/metaForum/index.php (scroll down to "Forums and Subforums, Meet Channels") I personally would most of all prefer subforums but I just wanted to add this to the subject.

tthmaz

Any progress on this extensions? Has it been made and available yet?

daveh

Would it be easier to create a Subcategories extension that just relies on a category naming convention. That way there would be no need to modify the database structures. EG. (based on iambigred's request) you would create 4 categories named... Sports and Societies Sports and Societies>>1>>Football Sports and Societies>>2>>Cricket Sports and Societies>>3>>Rugby (The numbers are a suggestion to allow you to specify the order you want them shown in.) *edit* - actually, you probably wouldn't need this if you used the admin page to order them appropriately. This way the Subcategory extension would simply need to strip out the unnecessary parts of the category name and style it into a hierarchical list, giving you... Sports and Societies ...Football ...Cricket ...Rugby Just a thought!

Thomas Heath

Clerver, methinks.