Re: Parent name change

Posted by GregChapman on Feb 17, 2017; 5:43pm
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Parent-name-change-tp7597756p7597762.html

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.