forums index - "feed" by categories?

[Omri Amos]

I love the new "feed" style of the forum index.

However, I notices that it doesn't work as I hoped it would.
It takes all the main forums and shows combines messages from each main forum and all its sub-forums.

I don't use sub-forums.
Instead, I have many categories, one for each subject (type "category" and not "discussions" because I didn't want people to post inside a main "category" forum) and then have multiple "discussions" forums inside each category.

I want the feed view to show combined topics from all the "discussions" forums inside each "category".
It there a way to make it work?

I could technically change all the categories into "discussions" forums (which will make all the existing "discussions" forums under it sub-forums) and then it will work - but then I will just have an empty forum for each subject that will confuse people.

 

[Marc]

Im honestly not sure what you mean here, to be honest. You cant actually post in categories at all. You can only post within discussion forums. Categories are just that. They are for placing discussion forums within. The feed view will indeed show everything, and you can then filter on the right

[Omri Amos]

2 hours ago, Marc said:

and you can then filter on the right

I think you are mixing "feed" with "fluid"..

The problem with my current setup is that I get a complete full block for each single forum (categories are ignored).

Let's say I have 5 categories at the root level, and then 4 forums on each category for a total of 20 forums, without any sub-forums for these forums.

CATEGORY 1
FORUM 1, FORUM 2, FORUM 3, FORUM 4

CATEGORY 2
FORUM 5, FORUM 6, FORUM 7, FORUM 8

CATEGORY 3 
FORUM 9, FORUM 10, FORUM 11, FORUM 12

CATEGORY 4
FORUM 13, FORUM 14, FORUM 15, FORUM 16

CATEGORY 5 
FORUM 17, FORUM 18, FORUM 19, FORUM 20

So since I have 20 forums, the "feed" view will simply ignore the categories and will display 20 blocks, for the 20 forums, with 5 recent topics from each forum on its own block.

This basically acts just like an "extended" version of the classic "table" view (where each forum gets its own row, with one recent topic), but with a bigger block for each forum instead of a simple row, and with 5 recent topics from that forum instead of just one.

What I actually want the "feed" view to do:

Show me only 5 blocks (because my root level got 5 categories, one block for each category) and show 5 recent topics that are merged from the 4 forums each category got. In addition, show the actual forums inside that categories the same way it currently shows sub-forums.

How I could actually accomplish that right now:

1. create one generic category (because for some reason I MUST have at least one? it won't let me save a "discussions" forum with no parent)
2. convert all 5 categories I currently have to "discussions" forums
3. put all 4 forums from each category as a sub-forum of that discussions forum

Why is this a bad solution:

Because now I will have an actual empty discussions forum that acts as a silly placeholder for a "category", with only the sub-forums as actual active forums.
Users might click on it and instead of them getting to the category view (that simply shows the forums inside it) they will be thrown to a weird empty forum view...

 

Does it make more sense now?

Edited 13 hours ago by Omri Amos

[Dreadknux]

Couldn't you just add an additional category layer to solve this problem? So you'd have for example:

CATEGORY 1
> CATEGORY 1.2
>> FORUM 1, FORUM 2, FORUM 3, FORUM 4

And do that for each category? That way the forums are nested an additional level, and the forum homepage will only display the one category group (Category 1.2 in this case) with, I imagine, posts from all four forums included in the feed.