As your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community grows, and more and more posts are contributed, it's likely you'll need to move some of them from one Category to another (typically because they're off-topic or just better suited elsewhere). In this article, we'll examine the three ways you can accomplish this.
Required permissions
The ability to move posts requires a few permissions:
- the
Garden > Moderation > Manage permission, - the
Edit permission for the Category that the post is currently in, - and the
Add permission for the Category you want to move the post to.
To learn more about accessing and managing your Roles and their permissions, check out the article below.
Move a single post
When moving a single post, the process will be slightly different depending on whether your community is configured to use legacy or custom Create Post page layouts. Both processes are outlined in their associated sections below.
Move a single post (legacy Create Post layouts enabled)
1. From the main Posts page or an individual post's page, click the ellipsis (...) menu associated to the post you want to move, and select Move.
2. In the resulting dialog:
- Choose which Category to move the post to.
- If you want to optionally provide a redirect link, check the associated box. This is typically done when moving posts that are popular, as they may be bookmarked by your users and this helps them easily navigate to the new location.
- Click Move to complete the process.
Move a single post (custom Create Post layouts enabled)
When custom Create Post page layouts are enabled, a new feature becomes available in your community: Post Types. Because of this, the move process includes an additional step (discussed below).
1. From the main Posts page or an individual post's page, click the ellipsis (...) menu associated to the post you want to move, and select Move.
2. In the resulting dialog:
- Choose which Category to move the post to.
- As part of the move process, you can optionally change the post to a different Post Type. As shown in the image below, the current Post Type is listed, and you can select a different one from the Convert to Post Type dropdown. The available Post Types depend on the chosen Category's accepted Post Types. For example, if you're moving a post to a Category that only accepts Questions, this will be the only Post Type you can select.
📝 NOTE: Post Types may also include custom Post Fields. Refer to the Post Field section below to learn how these are handled during the conversion process.
✔️ TIP: You don't have to actually move a post: You can use this move process to change one Post Type to another by simply keeping the Category the same and selecting a new Post Type. You will, of course, be limited by a Category's associated Post Types.
- If you want to optionally provide a redirect link, check the associated box. This is typically done when moving posts that are popular, as they may be bookmarked by your users and this helps them easily navigate to the new location.
- Click Move to complete the process.
How Post Fields are handled during Post Type conversion
When converting one Post Type to another, keep in mind the following about any associated Post Fields: Shared Post Fields will be migrated as-is; on the other hand, if the new Post Type does not support the current Post Type's custom Post Fields, that data is not lost but will be displayed as follows:
- Post Fields with a visibility of Public will be added as text below the post with a Public Data label.
- Post Fields with a visibility of Private will be added as text below the post with a Private Data label.
- Post Fields with a visibility of Internal will be added as text below the post with an Internal Data label.
Move multiple posts
Do you need to move multiple posts to the same Category? Rather than performing the method above for each one, let's learn how to move multiple posts at the same time.
Before we begin...
The ability to multi-select posts and comments must be enabled for your Vanilla community before you can move multiple posts.
To check this:
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Posts > Posting.
- Make sure the Enable checkboxes on posts and comment option is toggled ON.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
Steps
1. On the main Posts page, check the box for each post you want to move.
2. At the bottom left of the page, click Move.
3. In the resulting dialog:
- Choose which Category to move the posts to (all posts must go to the same Category).
- If you want to optionally provide a redirect link, check the associated box. This is typically done when moving posts that are popular, as they may be bookmarked by your users.
- Click Move to complete the process.
Move posts when deleting a Category
This option is mostly used when archiving a Category, or merging two Categories.
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Posts > Categories.
3. Click the Category's actions menu and select Delete.
4. Select the Move content... option, and select the Category to move all content to.
5. Upon clicking Delete Category, the Category is deleted and all of its posts and associated comments will be moved to the chosen replacement Category.
📝 NOTE: Before deleting a Category, review the considerations below.
Considerations when deleting a Category
- Deleting a Category is permanent; not even Vanilla Support can bring it back.
- If the Categories in question have custom permissions, be sure to review them beforehand.
- If the allowed Post Types (Discussions, Questions, Ideas, Polls) don't align, content will be lost. For example, if the Category you're deleting contains Questions but the Category you're moving content to does not support this Post Type, those questions will be lost.
- Categories with custom permissions can also define view permissions for each Role. Depending on each Category's custom view permissions, users in certain Roles may either lose or gain access to content in the replacement Category.
✔️ TIP: Beyond View permissions determining whether users can even see the content, you should also review the more admin-related permissions to ensure your Admins and Moderators will be able to manage the new content.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.
