Solved Locking a Category Makes it a Section?

Hi all - I recently installed Kunena 2.0.2 | 2012-09-02 [ Botschafter ] into Joomla 2.5.6. This was a clean install of both, and no other extensions have been installed into Joomla or Kunena.

I created a category entitled Announcements. Its intended purpose is to allow the administrator to post topics in a read-only environment. After creating it, and then locking it, Kunena converted this category to a section, which of course means no posting. If I unlock it, I do not see a way to allow only the administrator to post in it.

What am I missing? I do not equate locking a category being the same thing as a category. I am a long-time user of vBulletin, and am taking the plunge into Kunena, so if I am overlooking something obvious, be gentle with me.

I tried all kinds of permission and option settings in an attempt to get this to work; however, none did.

Locking an empty category - a category that has no posts in it - "transforms" the category into a section. As we all know, administrators and moderators are the only ones who can post messages in a locked category but no-one, not even administrators and moderators, can create topics or post messages in a section. Therefore the issue comes down to a question of whether you want a locked category - something that allows administrators and/or moderators to create topics - or a section.

It's not difficult to create a locked category but, I agree, it would seem a little unnecessary to have to create a category, post a message into that category first, and then lock the category afterwards. As counter-intuitive as this approach may seem, it's really the only way that one can achieve that solution.

I actually empathise very closely with this issue. In the last re-organisation of categories that we undertook at this website, there were some categories that I wanted to allow administrators and/or moderators to be able to post messages and there were some categories whose sole purpose was to act as containers for other categories - sections, if you like to think of them that way. So, while it's a little inconvenient to create an "Announcements" category and lock it before you've actually used it (only to discover that you can't use it unless you unlock again), this is the way K 2.0 works. In fact, I think this behaviour was introduced in K 1.7 (one of my colleagues may be able to confirm this).

The short answer is that Kunena sections are not the same as Joomla sections - and Joomla sections don't even exist after J! 1.5 anyway. Kunena sections are categories whose primary purpose is to act as "containers" for other categories. The definition of sections and categories is contained in Sections, Categories, sub-Categories (Part 1) . I hope that what I have written helps.

Yes, what you wrote helped.

From a programming standpoint, I can see how I likely would have done things a bit differently. A category that has no posts, yet is locked, would not "automatically" have to make become a section. Maybe the developers would consider making such a change in a future version. I agree it is not pressing; however, it is confusing to some extent.

Thanks. I agree: confusing but not an insoluble problem.