Parent name change

[vinmansbrew]

OK, so I may have called this the wrong name, bear with me. On my forum, it is set up as "mixed". The very first section has the default name of "topics". I am assuming this is the parent. Under it are the subs. Is there a way to change this name from "topics" to something else? Something a little more descriptive?

[GregChapman]

I need to check that we have the terminology right. Take another look at my forum at:
http://www.seahawk17.org.uk/forum.php
There you see a "Mixed" application with the title "SeaHawk Forum".

There are a number of sub-forums of the "SeaHawk Forum". These are:

Announcements and FAQs
Introduce Yourself
Gallery
My Boat
For Sale
Help Desk
General Discussion
Forum Issues

The parent for each of these is "SeaHawk Forum". You can confirm this by clicking on any of the sub-forum headings. You will see the "breadcrumb menu" at the top left of the forum show:

SeaHawk Forum > xxxx (where xxxx is the name of the sub-forum you selected.)

Now take a look the sub-forum "the Boat" (which happens to be a "Category" application). This has a number of further sub-forums within it. e.g:

Osprey
Falcon
English Rose
Piccolo ... and more

Click on any of those and you go deeper into the structure. (These are all "Forum" applications) The breadcrumb menu will now show:
SeaHawk Forum > My Boat > xxxx (where xxxx is the name of the sub-forum you selected.)

At this level the parent of the areas "Osprey", "Falcon", "English Rose", "Piccolo" and so on is "My Boat", not "SeaHawk Forum".

The general concept is that of multiple generations in a family. The top level of a forum being the parent of any immediate sub-forums. These sub-forums are the "children" of the parent forum. If there are children of the of the child sub-forums they'll be the grand-children of the parent forum. The parent of a grand-child is the the child.

I'd certainly suggest that you change the title of your "Topics" sub-forum, to indicate the nature of the topics you expect to find within it. To do this go into the sub-forum concerned and select:

Options > Application > Edit name & description

[vinmansbrew]

http://cb750k-all-years.1012526.n3.nabble.com/ This is my test, so I don't blow up the regular forum! Anyways, if I edit name and description, where it says "topics" does not change. It actually changes in the upper left hand corner, and leaves "topics" completely as-is.

Also, how did you get the tabs at the top? And the drop downs from those tabs?

[GregChapman]

vinmansbrew wrote

if I edit name and description, where it says "topics" does not change. It actually changes in the upper left hand corner, and leaves "topics" completely as-is.

 
I misunderstood. I assumed you had created a sub-forum called "Topics". Now I see its something different.

When you enter any forum at any level in the hierarchy that has sub-sub-forums in it, the page will show a heading "Sub-Forums & Topics" If there are no sub-forums the heading will be "Topics" - because that is all that is there. You can't alter that!

I think what might be confusing you is that you seem to have an unnecessary 2nd tier in your hierarchy (Classic and Vintage Honda). To make things easier to understand I'd suggest picking one of these approaches:

1. Move all your sub-forums so the top level becomes their parent, then delete the redundant sub-forum "Classic and Vintage Honda" so the structure becomes:

Vintage Honda motorcycles
----CB350/400
----CB500/550/650
----Honda Singles - 1964 - 1984
----Repair sources and write-ups. Do not ask questions here.
----General Discussions on most anything
----Member's Builds - A place to share your current project.

2. Introduce more than one sub-forum at the second level. Change the name of "Classic and Vintage Honda" to "Twins", create two more sub-forums at the top level (Vintage Honda motorcycles) called "Singles" and "Miscellaneous" then move the sub-forms that don't fit the "Twins" classification to the appropriate sub-forum. The structure should turn out looking like this:

Vintage Honda motorcycles
----Twins
--------CB350/400
--------CB500/550/650
----Singles
--------1960s
--------1970s
--------1980s
----Miscellaneous
--------Repair sources and write-ups. Do not ask questions here.
--------General Discussions on most anything
--------Member's Builds - A place to share your current project.

In either case the breadcrumb menu towards the top left shows will now show which sub-forum you are in with its parent (and perhaps Grandparent) further left.

In many cases it makes much more sense for users if you prevent users from making any posts in a forum that has sub-forums, So, in both the examples above you would ban posting in the top level "Vintage Honda motorcycles" forum and in this second option also remove the permission to Create_topics from the "Twins", "Singles" and "Miscellaneous" sub-forums and and only allow your users to post in one of their sub-forums.

You'll note that this "Free Support" forum does not follow this pattern. It combines sub-forums and topics. This approach works if you regard foreign language questions as a distraction for the vast majority of your audience, so you push them off to a special area. If you regarded all languages as having equal weight then you would choose to have an "English" sub-forum as well and only allow posting in the relevant language sub-forum banning it at the parent "Free Support" level.

Also, how did you get the tabs at the top? And the drop downs from those tabs?

My forum is embedded in my main web site and the tabs and drop down menus are a feature of the main site.