Frequently on this support forum, we've heard of confusion and complaints about how members misuse the multiple category option. We recently ran internal stats, and found out that 97.5% of all topics on lefora are in just in 1 category. That means a very small percentage exist in more than one category.
So the first question you might ask is, 'What does it mean to post in multiple categories?' Since we see that not many people have used it, you may not have been aware that when posting a topic, you can select one or more categories to post into. The idea was to allow a conversation to be found from multiple places. But the reality has been a lot of confusion and abuse of the system. We have other ideas going forward that will address our initial intentions.
When we dug down a bit further into that minor 2.5%, we found one of two things:
- The majority of topics that existed in more than 1 category, existed in just 2 categories, and that wasn't too frequent.
- The 2nd most occurring use case, was that a topic would exist in every available category on the board - this was typically done by members who were confused or overzealously trying to promote their thread.
The pros of moving Lefora into 'one category per topic' system (which is the universal norm across all other forum software):
1) Less confusion for your members, especially the new ones
2) Avoids a long listing of categories below the post box which makes it hard to see the 'Submit Post' button - we'll be changing it to a dropdown box.
3) Removes duplicate posts in your forum's RSS feed
4) Allows us to eventually provide for you 'Admin Only' private categories. This has been a much requested feature on lefora, and one reason we couldn't handle it, is how would you handle the case of a topic that exists in a private and a public category. This will avoid any confusion there.
5) Speeds up your forum - having topics linked from multiple categories actually creates scalability issues and has slowed down a number of forums with a lot of categories and a lot of topics.
6) Prevents bugs in your category editor - a number of admins have complained about problems on their admin panel when trying to move categories between groups (with a large number of categories).
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Above, I mentioned our initial intentions were positive - we wanted to help members find the right topic when browsing. Our decision going forward will be to use keyword 'tags' in this same manner. This will be sometime off in the future though, so how the interface will work on all this is still to be decided and when the time is right, we'll ask for input from the community.
What does this mean going forward? We're going to phase in this change in stages:
- Phase 1 [next 1-3 weeks] - any new topics created on your forum, will have a drop down to select only one category, instead of multiple.
- Phase 2 [3+ weeks from now] - We'll go through and manually set old topics that are in multiple categories to only one category. If any admins request, we can send them a mapping of their old topic/category pairings, to their new trimmed down topic/category parings.
- Phase 3 [a month or two out] - We'll introduce 'keyword' tagging so that admins who want something like multiple categories will still be able to provide this for their members.
I like multiple categories and I want to continue having it in my forum!
As our design philosophy is to build a platform that works for the masses, sometimes we have to sacrifice certain features in order to keep things simple and running smoothly. For one, we want an admin panel that's sleek with minimal options. And two, every option and feature that exists on Lefora creates more complexity on the backend and slows us down from adding new features. By keeping Lefora simple in terms of options, it allows us to make upgrades and changes without having to maintain multiple systems. We always take into account the needs of members on the forum, hence why we ran the stat to see 97.5% of posts where not using this feature. We also take into account our own desires to make an easy to use product that we can continue to build upon and expand.
And all is not lost, we'll be introducing a tagging system in the future, that will be similar to categories and allow an admin or member to 'tag' a topic with multiple keywords. This is how many blogging platforms and photo sharing sites work, and we'll apply the same methods here at Lefora.
I like! 
Sounds good Chief. Not had much of a problem with it but it does create a long list when posting a new Topic. Will be better as a drop down selection box.
Great work.
I like all of this. As an admin or moderator, it should still be possible to post an announcement across the categories? We usually delete them after the announcement is stale, if not, like you said, no big loss.
As for the admin areas, excited is a good word. Will this mean it will lead to the ability to give moderators rights to only specific categories and such in the future? Seems the coding COULD go that way logically, but what do I know.
Thanks for the dedication. This is the best forum hosting solution out there, I have seen them all!
This is you guys!!!!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm i like multiple categories..... but i trust you guys. you know what youre doing.
I like multiple categories too, although it can cause a headache if someone uses EVERY category to post in. But our general page scrolls VERY quickly and if a topic can be posted in both general, and say, politics, then that topic is available to be commented on for much longer without paging back.
Just sayin'.
Looking forward to the excellent proposals Chief 
Should be a great improvement for most.
Thanks for the feedback everybody. And nickyjames and wrenna, I think you will be happy with our 'tagging' system that we roll out in the future. Even here on support I have used multiple categories in the past, but I'll be able to use tags in the future (for instance, maybe something is both a 'tutorial' and a 'new feature release'
And the process has gone smoothly, so we sped things up a bit, and are now in Phase II - so we've grouped old topics into one category, you may notice that your topic 'counts' are lower, because before a topic may have been counted twice in two categories. It will not show the true topic & post count.
Here's an example:
If you had a topic about apple pies, and it was in 'two' categories, say 'Recipes' and 'Things that taste good', it will now only exist in 1 category. Usually, it will exist in the 'older' of the two categories
If you're having trouble finding your posts, you can try a forum search or browsing through other categories. You may want to make an announcement on your forum (though only a small percentage of forums actually used multiple categories like I mentioned above.
We may be able to provide you a mapping of your old topic categories to your updated single category. Just send me an email at 'chief -at- lefora.com' with a link to your forum and the subject 'Multiple Category Mapping'
Thanks for doing this Cheif, looking good and not too many mislaid topics. As an admin though, when I move a topic I still get a link in the pop up that says UNCHECK ALL.
My multiple post gone. Today I must to post new and try to find 'what happen ?'
Now I knew because it change system.
tangthai, no posts were removed. If you had a post in two categories, now it still exists, but it just exists in one category.
If you want a mapping of your topics between the old categories and the new ones, just email at the address i included above.
i do not like this single category posting.
in my case this forum is useless.
i don't know why you change this to less options normally you develope to more options.
less confusion?
may seperate this better with category topics.
i am angry about this change.
please change this to multiple category posting again.
or give us the oportunity to change this by ourself.
Hi musicinformer, regretfully, we cannot offer both options. I can send you a mapping of your old forum topics to their categories vs. you forum's new topic/category mappings. Just send me an email at 'chief -at- lefora.com'. And if you have any questions not in the topic's main post, please feel free to include them on the email.
I just noticed this this morning. Nice work! I have been moving so many threads lately to the appropriate categories. Definitely a time saver.
at the moment just 4% are use single posting.
but lefora got famous thru multiple category posting.
i need multiple posting.
you really can sort topics better thru this.
I'll quote Chief here :
"We recently ran internal stats, and found out that 97.5% of all topics on lefora are in just in 1 category."
So I don't know where you got your figure of 4%.
i need multiple posting.
you really can sort topics better thru this.
-themusicinformer
Surely multiple posting is the opposite of sorting.
How is Phase 3 coming with the Keyword tagging? I am sure my forum will be much better off when this phase is finished as my Designers are just not posting in my Forum lately.....
Keyword tagging will be a little further out, I don't have a date, as we're currently focused on wrapping up our email server and our authentication system (which are taking priority right now).
Right now my forum has 13 catagories and 253 Topics.... with over 4000 post..
My question is how will this effect me?
I think I need the categories to have all the topics in the right place?
How will I do this with just one Category? can some one look at my forum and let me know what i can do to adjust me and my users to the change? http://mmamafia.lefora.com/forum/
I trust and love the Lefora way but i have only had my forum up for 2 weeks today and this ability to guide all the traffic my forum gets was one of the reason I made lefora as my choice and now I am worried because we just started up alot of off site promotion to get more people involved....
Thanks in advance for your time
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