Subforums



One of the many new features in phpBB 3.0 are subforums. Especially bulletin boards with a high number of forums will benefit from this. In the simple flat category and forum approach in phpBB 2.0, all forums and categories were listed on the forum index. In Olympus you can now put as many forums, links, or categories as you like inside other forums.

If you have a forum about pets for instance, you are able to put subforums for cats, dogs, or guinea pigs inside it without making the parent "Pets" forum a category. In this example, only the "Pets" forum will be listed on the index like a normal forum. Its subforums will appear as simple links below the forum description (unless you disabled this).

Figure 3.3. Creating subforums

Creating subforums

Creating subforums. In this example, the subforums titled "Cats" and "Dogs" belong in the "Pets" parent forum. Pay close attention to the breadcrumbs on the page, located right above the list of the subforums. This tells you exactly where you are in the forums hierarchy.

This system theoretically allows unlimited levels of subforums. You can put as many subforums inside subforums as you like. However, please do not go overboard with this feature. On boards with five to ten forums or less, it is not a good idea to use subforums. Remember, the less forums you have, the more active your forum will appear. You can always add more forums later.

Read the section on forum management to find out how to create subforums.