Question About Nesting Older Categories

erikhustad

I see some discussions related to this from years past, but have not found a solution yet that accomplishes what I'm hoping to do.

We intend to have our forum homepage be a list of current categories, within each will be discussions related to that category. I'd like to have one last category at the bottom called something like "Older Topics" or some-such. Nested under this would be categories we deem to be stale.

I've accomplished all of this so far in the dashboard, but here's where I'm stuck: when I go back to the homepage I see the top-level "Older Topics" category, but I also see all of the nested categories beneath it. For economy of space on the homepage, I'd like the nested categories to only be visible if you click on the Older Topics category, the same way discussions are only visible if you click into a given category.

Is this possible to do? Archiving isn't a great option, as it hides the category itself, preventing users from stumbling upon it. Though these categories may get little engagement in the long-run we still want them to be visible if users go looking for them.

Thanks!

peregrine

A bit hard to visualize without seeing a screenshot.

but you could conceivably do this via css with an nth elements in category list. and hidden via display: none. (since it is just a visual thing and isolate the hiding to the id of your home page.

or via js.

or you could also modify some of the category plugins that slide up and down.

erikhustad

Thanks! Is there a particular category plugin you'd recommend that can hide nested categories?

peregrine

A bit hard to visualize without seeing a screenshot of what you want to do and where.

any chance of you posting a screenshot. with what you want to hide and where,

erikhustad

Sure thing! So this is how it looks right now in the Dashboard, under Categories (I removed the domain):

And this is how it looks on the categories homepage:

"Test" is indented from "Older Titles" because it's now a sub-category, which is exactly how I'd like it. However, eventually there will be a very long list of sub-categories under "Older Titles" and I'd prefer that these not show up immediately when loading the category homepage. Either the user would have to click a "+" to expand out the list of sub-categories, or click "Older Titles" to go into that category, at which point they'd see all of the sub-categories.

Does that make sense?

peregrine

sure you could do that with jquery. test the js, etc with a web developer, once you have the code working you can add the js via a plugin.

if you are unfamiliar with that. you could do what you originally requested
hide them on the categories page.

you could do that by giving each category you want hidden on category page a class (via edit category - there is an option for cssclass) give a class e.g. hiddencategory.

than on category page you would find id via web developer

e.g. #vanilla_categories_index

then find out how to select item class hiddencategory on category page

e.g. .Item-hiddencategory

vanilla_categories_index .Item-hiddencategory {

display:none;
}

x00 has a category plugin for the panel you could get ideas how to adapt for your needs on the content. or just go to a jquery tutorials page to look at sliding toggles or hide or show, etc.

erikhustad

Awesome. Thanks for the level of detail. I'll do some investigation and see how far I get!

peregrine

awesome. right back at ya.