Managing categories & boards

The structure manager lets admins design and evolve the way a forum is organised, without losing existing content.

Accessing the structure manager

From the admin dashboard or a forum admin view, open the structure or categories & boards area. There you can see:

• All current categories.
• The boards inside each category.
• Controls to create, edit, reorder, and remove items.

Changes you make here update how members experience the forum.

Creating and editing categories

For each category, you can:

• Set a name and (optionally) a description.
• Choose the order in which categories appear.

Guidelines:

• Use names that are clear and stable over time.
• Avoid duplicating concepts across categories.
• Think from the member's point of view: "Where would I look for X?"

Creating and editing boards

Boards live inside categories. For each board, you can usually configure:

• Name and description.
• Who can see the board.
• Who can start threads and who can reply.

Common patterns:

• Public boards for announcements or onboarding.
• Member-only boards for ongoing discussion.
• Staff-only boards for internal coordination.

Reordering and refactoring

Over time you may need to:

• Move boards between categories.
• Merge low-activity boards.
• Split large, noisy boards into more focused ones.

Forumera's structure tools aim to make these changes safe and predictable, keeping existing threads intact while improving navigation for members.

Common structure mistakes

A few patterns to avoid, especially on new forums:

• Too many empty boards. Creating ten boards on day one looks complete on paper and feels dead in practice. Start with three, add boards when an existing one gets noisy.
• Boards that overlap. "General discussion" plus "Off-topic" plus "Chatter" reads like generosity but feels like indecision to members. Pick one.
• Categories that group nothing. A category needs at least two boards to justify the visual weight of its header. If a category has one board, fold the board into a neighbouring category.
• Board names that explain a feature instead of a topic. Members care about the topic ("Pattern sharing"), not the category type ("Sharing posts").

When to refactor

The signal that your structure needs work is usually one of:

• Members keep posting in the "wrong" board (their wrong, not yours).
• One board is doing 80% of the traffic and others are dead.
• New members ask "where do I post about X?" repeatedly.

When you refactor, do it in one sitting and announce it: rename boards, merge two into one, move stuck threads, then pin a post explaining the change. Half-finished restructuring creates more confusion than the original problem.