May 17, 2008Do you really need subforums?
One of the more popular MODs for phpBB2 (and now a standard feature for phpBB3) is subforums. The original forum structure for phpBB2 includes the following hierarchy:
Board -> Category -> Forum -> Topic -> Post
With the very popular Simple Subforums MOD (sometimes called SSF) you can get this:
Board -> Category -> Forum -> Sub-Forum -> Topic -> Post
For some people that one extra level is enough. You can enable posting at the parent forum or the child forum level if you want. Several years ago I wrote my own sub-forum MOD for use on my largest board. It works okay. Like the SSF MOD I only coded for one level. Unlike the SSF MOD mine is optimized from a query perspective, and doesn’t require the eXtreme Styles MOD. I think both of those are advantages to my code over SSF.
But what if there was something else… something in between a full-fledged sub-forum implementation and a basic configuration? I have written a new MOD to do just that, and am currently using it on my largest board.
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