Solved Forums, categories and subcategories: how to archive?

I'm a new user just starting with Kunena. Would appreciate some advice on the best way to structure a forum for its intended use:

I have a forum for a community that will have two kinds of users: registered and committee members. I have the ACLs set up so that the subforum for the latter group isn't visible to non-members.

Within that subforum I have set up 2 categories: Projects and Archived Projects.

Projects is intended to contain discussions on open projects, which are moved to Archived Projects when the project is completed. Each project might have several topics.

I can see how to move individual discussions within a Project to Archived Projects. I would like to be able to move all discussions for a Project at once when archiving a Project.

At the moment it looks to me like the best way to do it would be create a new Project subcategory under Archived Projects and then move all relevant discussions to that.

It seems slightly inelegant, compared to, say, dragging and dropping a particular Project category to Archived Projects or somehow changing the parent to effect the same result.

I'm basically looking to structure things around the easiest way to archive off a series of related discussions but keeping them together -- where archive just means moving to one side and retaining in the database, not exporting.

Thanks for any advice.

G'day, harmlessdrudge, and welcome to the community.

A couple of months ago I replied to a similar question on this subject, in which I wrote:

sozzled wrote: ... there is no simple, "one-button press", automated archival system within Kunena. There is a topic purge feature - a feature that trashes all topics before a certain date - but not a feature that moves all topics (from perhaps hundreds of categories on a website) into one single "archive" category. As far as I know (I could be wrong), there is no feature built into Kunena that moves all topics, based on some arbitrary date, into an "archive" category for you.

However, as you can see on the forum here , we have many "archived" categories where older topics are moved. The difference in this case is that it's the forum moderators who routinely move topics from one category to another category. There are also many "archived" categories here, too.

As you say, maybe this approach is not the most elegant solution but it's the method that works nonetheless. It might be "nice" to have a single-button feature that saves a bit of time but designing, constructing and testing such a feature would probably take a long time to do, too, and the savings achieved in this work may not necessarily offset the effort required to carry out the changes to the way that Kunena currently works.

I think it's worth clarifying the terms used in this subject of topic ("forums", "categories" and "subcategories". You cannot "archive" forums - perhaps you mean sections - categories or subcategories from the frontend; these operations can only be done in the backend. You can "move" a section and all its categories/subcategories to a different section (an "archive" section, if you would prefer to describe it that way) with the Kunena Category Manager by changing the section's parent. Likewise, you can "move" a category within a section (and all the subcategories within that category) elsewhere by changing its parent.

You can, if you wish, "archive" topics by moving them from one category to another category. You perform operations at the topic level from the frontend. Did you know that you can use select multiple topics in any category (even across several categories) and move them at the same time?

It all depends, really, on how often you need to archive things as to whether a different method would be more elegant as opposed to what you can currently do. If you had to do this archiving on a daily basis, where you had to archive dozens of things each day, I can see where this would be highly desirable. If, on the other hand, you only do this kind of activity on an infrequent basis, then it's not that difficult to use the features that currently exist to move things around.

Very helpful!

Just for clarification, each discussion is expected to be an issue related to a project. Once the project is finished I need to archive the project and all the discussions. I can see how to archive (move) the individual discussions quickly and easily but not both the project and the discussions (topic headers and replies) simultaneously, so that things stay together.

harmlessdrudge wrote: Each discussion is expected to be an issue related to a project ... [and] I need to [be able to] archive the project and all the discussions.

I don't know what you mean by the terms "project" and "discussion". Just as I wanted to clarify the terms "forums", "categories" and "subcategories", I think you should also clarify what you mean by your own terms, too.

We do our best to help people understand how Kunena works but I cannot help you if I don't understand your technical terminology.

1. What is a project?
2. What is a discussion?

harmlessdrudge wrote: Very helpful!

Just for clarification, each discussion is expected to be an issue related to a project. Once the project is finished I need to archive the project and all the discussions. I can see how to archive (move) the individual discussions quickly and easily but not both the project and the discussions (topic headers and replies) simultaneously, so that things stay together.

You could create an Archive Category named specifically to the finished project(s), and then move all the related discussions into that category.

The category can be created in the backend and you can move the threads and discussions etc., to that category with the moderation tools as admin in the front end.

My forum hierarchy is like this

Forum
--subforum
--subforum
--subforum
Private Forum (for use by committee members)
--Projects subforum
----Project A subforum
----Project B subforum
----Project C subforum
--Archived Projects subform (for closed projects)

What I want to do is archive a project, which may contain many discussions, as simply and as easily as possible -- without having to use the back end to create categories below the Archived Projects subforum. Ideally I'd like those with access to the private forum to be able to do this but only 1 or 2 will have access to the back end.

It's not a huge problem. Apologies if my language wasn't clear. The picture above is slightly simplified for illustration. There are some other subforums in the Private forum, but their contents won't need to be archived.

Hello harmlessdrug,

I would just move the entire category for the Project(A|B|C) under the Archived Projects subform you specified below and lock that category.

However please be aware moderators and administrators have full access to keep posting under those categories if their Joomla ACL access/group level has access to "viewing" the forum.

Best Reagards,
coder4life

Aaah. With the admin interface. Didn't think of that. Thanks.

Oh, it won't matter if there are any further comments on archived material. Moving them out of the way is primarily to enable easier focus on open projects.