Overview of category types
Categories provide a way to organize your community into areas of interest.
Category Types
There are six types of categories you can add to your community. Each category type provides unique features to facilitate engagement. You can add as many of each category type as you need, up to your plan limit:
- Discussions
- Questions
- Ideas
- Articles
- Events
- Issues
Example Uses
Here are a few examples of how you can use categories:
- For a company with multiple products, streamline user feedback by creating an Ideas category for each product.
- For a private internal community, help employees collaborate efficiently by creating a Discussions category for each team, department, and project.
- For your knowledge base, keep your articles organized by creating an Articles category for each subject area.
Here is an overview of each category type:
Idea Categories
In an Ideas category, people can share feedback and vote for ideas they support. You can see which ideas are most popular and select ideas to implement. Assign status labels, such as in review, planned, started and completed, to inform customers of the status of their feedback. You can create custom status labels to match your product development process.
Issues Categories
In an Issues category, people can report bugs and issues that they encounter with your products or services. Assign status labels, such as acknowledged, confirmed, fix pending and solved, to inform customers of the status of their feedback. You can create custom status labels to match your issue resolution process.
Q&A Categories
In a Q&A category, users can ask questions. Questions can be marked as “Answered” by the question author or by moderators. Moderators can also mark replies as “Official Response” or “Answer” and pin the best answer.
Discussions Categories
Users can start new topics and participate in ongoing conversations. As with all types, you can upload images, videos, and file attachments.
Category Members
A category can also include a "Join" option, which allows members to join the category and be listed in the category Members tab of that category. Designed for project teams, special interest groups, or other subgroups within a community, this capability provides a place for groups to collaborate. Members who join the category can participate in the discussions, are listed in the Members tab, and automatically get notified of new posts.
Enable this option in Admin > Categories. Select the category, then expand More Options and check Enable Join option.
Events Categories
You can schedule events and access a calendar of upcoming and past events. Events can have a schedule, a location with google maps integration, and users can RSVP.
Articles Categories
You can publish content in an article category, such as blog posts, news, and help articles.
Gallery Style
Gallery style displays posts as cards, featuring the image you have added in the post. Gallery style can be applied to any category type. Contact us at support@forumbee.com to enable this for any of your categories.
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