Categories / Root Forums

[Guest]

In IPB 2.1, "Root Forums" or Categories were treated just like regular forums. You were able to make any forum a category by setting its parent as "Root Forum", and you could just set it as a child of another forum to make it a regular forum again...

I've just tried to do it with a category on an IPB 2.2 board, but it appears that the "Category" edit screen is crippled to only allow you to change it's name and permissions... Nothing else.

Just wondered if this was intentional ( for clarity or ease of use, maybe )? and if there's any chance of getting back some sort of "power user" mode for editing them with all the old options... :)

[ellawella]

I believe categories are now treated as separate entities from forums.

[Guest]

They're still stored in the same database table. I manually changed the parent_id of one of them and it behaved just like a regular forum again.

[Keith J. Kacin]

Just wondered if this was intentional ( for clarity or ease of use, maybe )?

While it is not something we planned to remove, it was a compromise we had to do in make to make the system easier to use. The categories/forums was one of the biggest complaints from customers, due to its complexity.

Most "power users" will know how to do what you mentioned above, which is change it through the database. :)

[Black Prowler]

so if you make a catagory and then decide to delete it you can't do this without making the database edit? :unsure: or does he mean you have to edit the db to switch the cat to a forum? Just trying to understand. :ermm:

[Keith J. Kacin]

so if you make a catagory and then decide to delete it you can't do this without making the database edit? :unsure: or does he mean you have to edit the db to switch the cat to a forum? Just trying to understand. :ermm:

It is to switch a category to a forum.

[Charles]

Apparently I'm not a power user as this makes no sense to me. I should blog on my confusion.

[ellawella]

Would it hurt to add a "switch to forum" feature? And vice versa for forums?

[Black Prowler]

Apparently I'm not a power user as this makes no sense to me. I should blog on my confusion.

:yeahthat: :lol:

[Guest]

Apparently I'm not a power user as this makes no sense to me. I should blog on my confusion.

Heheh, here's what I had:

Category 1
-- forum 1
-- forum 2
-- forum 3

Category 2
-- forum 4

Here's what I wanted:

Category 1
-- forum 1
-- forum 2
-- forum 3
--Category 2
---- forum 4

In IPB 2.1, I could do this by just setting "Category 2"'s parent forum to "Category 1" instead of "Root Forum". In IPB 2.2, I can't do it at all without modifying the database directly.

This is bad. :P

[bfarber]

We got a LOT of complaints, especially from new and nontechnical users, about "what is a 'root' forum" and "how do I create categories". It was apparently very confusing for new users.

Likewise, new/non technical users were often creating 10 "root forums" with the understanding they would all show up on the board index...not realizing these were treated as categories and wouldn't show up with forums under them. If you add a category now with no forums, you will notice there is now some text to clarify it won't show up without any forums under them.

This was all part of the process to streamline and simplify categories vs forums for those that don't understand forums vs root forums. Perhaps in a later version we can add a "switch to forum" button for categories.

[Mark]

You could always create a forum and delete the category

[MrStormy]

I have an issue now from upgrading my forum to 2.2.

Several of my categories allow posts in the category itself and I have no way of turning that off? Evidently the category permissions were set to allow posting in the category under IPB 2.1.7, but now that we have upgraded the forum to 2.2, we have no easy way to correct this.

Your upgrade should check for this situation and recommend you fix it before upgrading since there is no option now to allow or disallow posting in categories.

[Cool Surfer]

I think if category n forums are used, it would be good. People know what they mean.

[theclub]

I often make categories when I have a new feature, then move them as forums into an existing category after a few weeks.

If I can't do that with 2.2, then I want to be able to, and not by mucking around with the database.

Something should be done about this, a few people complain, and tens of thousands don't, yet it's the complainers who get their way!

It doesn't make sense, Invision should use the poll feature here to see what the majority want before they change things like that.

What they have done is take away some of the functionality of the forum.

:(

[bfarber]

Firstly, by no means (in any way) would a poll here show what the majority of our users want. :thumbsup: Trust me, not all of our users are regulars on these forums.

We didn't specifically remove this functionality (for the sake of removing it) - we changed how they worked and failed to add in this capability. As I said, we'll look into making it easier to convert a category to a forum.

[theclub]

Firstly, by no means (in any way) would a poll here show what the majority of our users want. :thumbsup: Trust me, not all of our users are regulars on these forums.

Then why act on complaints? You have over 100,000 members here, how many complained?

... we'll look into making it easier to convert a category to a forum.

That's good. :thumbsup:

[Keith J. Kacin]

Then why act on complaints? You have over 100,000 members here, how many complained?

I can tell you first hand, from dealing with customer questions daily, that our number one confusion with the board for any new user was the categories/forums, and how they should be setup.

With this in mind, we worked on ways of simplifying the process. As Brandon noted, it was not removed for the sake of removing it - it may make a comeback soon.

I can also assure you that the majority of our customers do not use our company forums.

[bfarber]

Then why act on complaints? You have over 100,000 members here, how many complained?

Why act on complaints? Because customers drive our business - if we don't please (at least as many as possible of our) customers, we would go out of business no? Hence, why when we hear something doesn't work well over and over, we work to improve it. :)

It's the same with any functionality or feature in IPB. Just because you haven't heard how confusing it is....doesn't mean we haven't. :thumbsup:

[Guest]

Just wanted to point out, I don't think it should be switched back to how it was, it's obviously confusing to less experienced admins... I'm all for simplifying things for people who need it, but in doing so, you also shouldn't cripple functionality for the people that do understand it and do actively use it.

Given that the code is (obviously) still there for regular forum editing, which was what was used for categories in IPB 2.1... I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to just add an "Advanced Edit" kind of option in the dropdown. :thumbsup:

[bfarber]

What I plan on doing (in 2.2.2 or whatever is next, not 2.2.1) is add a "Switch to Forum" and "Switch to Category" button that will accomplish this - it's the easiest method to handle the issue, while still retaining it's clarity. :)

[rbiss]

The problem I have is all my categories in 2.2 click through to an error page. How do I stop that?

[bfarber]

Your categories click through to an error page? I'm not even sure how that would be possible? But, just submit a ticket and we'll sort it out for you. :)

[Minos]

So there is no way now to make a forum acts like a category.

[scottydawg]

I think removing the feature caused more confusion to the users that knew what they were doing. I spent 2 hours trying to figure out why you couldn't turn a category into a forum anymore.

How many people are going to want to have to run over to phpmyadmin and edit the database manually to be able to do this. I'm sorry but there needs to be a advanced option and that should of been though about before the functionality changed, not putting it off until the next release.