Thread

I’ve been reading through EE documentation and the message boards (as well as third party sites), and I’m still looking for a good description/explanation of:
 
  - what categories and category groups are
  - what they are used for
  - how to use them
  - how they relate to other parts of the EE application.

I’ve used Joomla CMS, but it seems that categories in Joomla are different from categories in EE.

It seems like the category concept is important, so any and all information is appreciated. Thanks!

Neal

Out of curiosity, did you find any helpful guides outside of what passes for documentation on this site? I’m starting to wrap my head around the whole categories concept but still struggling to get the right output. It seems like there is very little in the way of help when it comes to categories on these forums.

Well, I am not entirely sure I understand the issue here. Categories are a way to, ahem, categorize your content, and that’s pretty much it. If you are torn between catgories or weblogs, there is an article in the wiki to help you.

I’m not torn between weblogs or categories. I know both can accomplish what I’m trying to do, and actually based on that article you provided, categories supposedly work best for what I’m trying to accomplish.

What I would like is some documentation on how to dynamically get only certain child categories to show up based on which links the user clicks on.

I can’t find anything on that subject in the expression engine documentation.

Maybe I’m thinking too much about how to define categories. What I’m gathering is that while weblogs hold the actual page content, categories organize related weblogs into groups. Does that make sense? So they can be used more as an aide to build subnavs?

What I’m gathering is that while weblogs hold the actual page content, categories organize related weblogs into groups.

Not weblogs, articles, but yes, that’s the general idea.

So they can be used more as an aide to build subnavs?

Yes, of course.