Categories for Userlists

Hi

One of the many great features in CB, which in my view doesn't get enough credit, are the userlists. You have done some great work turning them into something that looks much better on the page, with the grid view option, and being able to add fields to these lists and control the way they look is a really powerful feature of CB.

Given this, I would like to suggest that you could add a category (and nested category) feature to the userlists? I am putting together a site which may end up with a pretty large number of lists, and managing these will become harder and harder as the site (hopefully) grows. Being able to manage these in categories would be a huge help, and if this was available as well in the menu item on the frontend, could really add something to the user experience.

Thanks

Userlists shouldn't need management beyond initially creating them. Categorization for management purposes would mean an additional database table and wouldn't really offer anything beyond adding another database table and column to filter down to in list management. I'd rather just improve the existing filters with more filter options to help find your lists better.

For frontend I can't see what categories would offer for userlists in a way that makes much sense. Categories can be done with HTML in a Joomla article for example then turn off the userlist selector dropdown if you'd like them for organization on frontend.

Hi Kyle

I'm revisiting this old topic as I find myself facing a similar issue again, with (potentially) large numbers of userlists.

However, I totally take your point about adding database table and filter columns, so another solution occurred to me, which would mean a revision to the userlist menu item. When you select the single category option, how about also being able to enter multiple categories, by number, maybe separated by a comma?

This would enable admin to break up userlists into sub-categories using the Joomla menu system. To make it work of course the dropdown select lists for each menu item would have to just include the userlists selected for that menu item.

This is not a pressing issue for me at the moment, but I did wonder if it was a possibility, and something you might consider adding in the future?

Thanks

We've no plans to add categories to userlist. They bring nothing of value beyond some minor management for backend in rare cases where there are an excessive amount of userlists, which still shouldn't be a problem given you can search by userlist title and description in backend. Frontend can be organized any number of ways either by using Joomla menu items to structure them or even custom categorization in a Joomla article with links to those menu items.

Hi

Sorry, misunderstanding here, totally my fault. What I meant to ask is this;

There is a menu item which allows you to select a single userlist; it would greatly add to the flexibility of userlists from my point of view, if there was a multiple select option here. In other words, instead of just being able to enter a single number which refers to a userlist, you could enter multiple numbers, separated by commas, say, to select multiple userlists. Each one of these menu items would then just pick up only the selected userlists, and thus it would be possible to really organise large numbers of userlists using Joomla menu system, as you say.

Thanks

That wouldn't be possible without an additional menu parameter and every internal userlist URL (e.g. paging, form searching, etc..) would all need to pick up and pass on that new parameter. Recommend just using a Joomla menu structure for organizing your userlists and disabling the userlist selector dropdown, which will very likely be removed in a later release when userlists code is redone.