Thanks Gizmo - you nailed it in your summary.
Basically child or sub forums populate their own plus their parent directory thus allowing users to either keep it broad or narrow down their browsing depending on their interest.
As an example take a classifieds site promoting accomodation deals a region. I will use Australia but it could be anywhere.
I am looking for a property to stay at in Thredbo. The navigation structure takes me through:
Australia, which has a subset of say 3 states because we only have snow in 3 states.
Australia : NSW or Victoria or Tasmania
I choose NSW I then have the choice of
Thredbo, Perisher, Selwyn or Charlotte Pass
I choose Thredbo and select a property.
That is 3 levels deep.
Australia : NSW : Thredbo.
However all the properties in Thredbo can also be seen in the NSW level because they are also in NSW and they can all be seen in the Australia level because they are also there. Drilling down the navigation narrows the search and hence reduces the number of listings but also allows broad level browsing if you desire.
Same with this.
Take another forum style, say a tech one. It has major catagory for Computers.
This then has sub forums for:
Laptops
Desktops
Servers
Then in say Laptops it has sub categories of PC or Mac.
Thus at the computer level forum the discussion is on all levels and you narrow it down depending on your interest level but you don't have to jump between half a dozen different forums if you don't want to - or you can stay where it lists everything.
Just a thought.
Oh well.
