Merging Child boards?

[eloycartw]

I am curious if there are any mechanisms or if anyone has tried to merge child boards?

We are prototyping on MAMP 6.6, SMF 2.1 clean install, no mods. PHP 7.4.2, MySQL 5.7.34.

We have a simple set up - diecast collectibles by type as categories, (Hot Wheels, Tamiko, Siku, etc), with major cities as child boards. Unfortunately, that means 200 identical child boards under every manufacturer.

The client noticed that if the child boards were somehow merged/combined, posters could share information across/between cities as well as by collectible type. For example, if the Tamiko collectors in Singapore wanted to organize an event they could post it on a single Singapore child board and it would display in all, regardless of manufacturer.

We have been experimenting with various design configurations and trying to evaluate the mods, but decided to ask if this has already been done? Or get any ideas

Thanks in advance

[Arantor]

Normally "merging child boards" simply means not creating the child boards in the first place.

What you might do is have a single board and use the topic prefixes mod to perform the same categorisation of cities.

[eloycartw]

We had the idea of segregating the manufacturers from the clubs/locations because most collectors are just interested in a specific company, and might be looking for a certain item made by that company. We were hoping to allow posters to be able to narrow their focus that way.

It was just after we started entering the same cities over and over, that the client thought of this idea  . Especially because there are occasionally topic overlaps within places, not just manufacturers.

For example, on this forum there is SMF Support/SMF 2.1.x Support... (I'm sorry, I'm just trying to draw an analogy) so what if under SMF 2.1.x Support, there were sub-categories like database, themes, mods, etc., that were repeated across all the other SMF versions, and someone just wanted to ask a question about databases (MySQL) generally? I think they would have to post individually under each version? What if they could post their question under SMF Support/SMF 2.1.x Support/Databases with the option to cross-post or link to all the other (entirely hypothetical) database child boards. There might be additional input or discussion about the topic.

This isn't a dealbreaker for the client, and I hope our question doesn't upset anyone. He just thought it would be a nice way to create a stronger community, so we thought we would see what might be possible.

Thank you

[Arantor]

So if I were trying to implement 2.1 Support/Databases, I wouldn't make the Database sub-board in the first place, I'd use the topic prefixes mod to add Database as a prefix as a visible way of tagging the topic. Same ability presented without the overhead of having that huge list.

Also, your question hasn't upset anyone I'm just saying I wouldn't implement it this way, with "if I were trying to solve your problem, how I would go about it".

[Kindred]

the main problem with having a bunch of sub-boards is that the traffic becomes significantly less on each one, which makes the overall forum look less busy.

By using a single board and then some other method or sorting (like prefixes or tags as Arantor suggests) then your main board has all the traffic that would be spread between X sub-boards. The forum looks active -- and people are more inclined to participate in an active appearing forum

[eloycartw]

A mod sounds like a good thing to try. Is "SMF Post Prefix" the one you mean?

[Arantor]

Yup, that's the one.

[eloycartw]

Thanks! We've played with "SMF Post Prefix" for a few days, and we think it will get us 85%-90% of what we hoped, so we'll launch with that
Thank you

[Steve]

Marking solved then.