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Admin-Controlled Topic Prefixes with Dropdown Selection

Feature Requests
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  • Hey everyone!

    I'd love to see NodeBB get native topic prefixes as a core feature. Basically, I want admins to be able to create a list of prefixes (like "Bug", "Question", "Help", etc.) and users choose from a dropdown when posting - just like the category selector.

    What I'm picturing:

    • Admin creates prefixes in ACP (Bug, Help, Question, Guide, etc.)
    • When users create topics, they get a dropdown to pick a prefix
    • Topics show up with colored labels like [Bug] My topic title
    • Users can filter topics by prefix type

    Why this would be awesome:

    My forum has different types of posts mixed together - bug reports, questions, guides, discussions. Right now it's hard to quickly see what type of post something is. With prefixes, users could instantly know if they're looking at a bug report or a help request.

    Current situation:

    There's the nodebb-plugin-topic-badges plugin, but it requires typing [Bug] manually in square brackets. It works, but people forget to use it or type it wrong. Plus, admins can't control what prefixes are allowed - users can type anything they want. A proper dropdown would be much cleaner and more consistent.

    This seems like it would fit perfectly with NodeBB's clean design philosophy while making forums way more organized.

    Thoughts?

  • Use tags and set a whitelist and force at least 1 tag. This forces users to tag their topics and only allow the tags set in the whitelist.

    You can color the tags with custom css using the tag specific class name tag-class-<tag_name>

    image.png

  • Use tags and set a whitelist and force at least 1 tag. This forces users to tag their topics and only allow the tags set in the whitelist.

    You can color the tags with custom css using the tag specific class name tag-class-<tag_name>

    image.png

    @baris
    Thanks for the suggestion! I looked into the tag whitelist approach, but it doesn't quite solve what I need.

    The main issue:

    When you set a tag whitelist for a category, users can only use those whitelisted tags and cannot add any other custom tags. This breaks the normal tagging functionality.

    What I actually need:
    • Prefixes for categorizing the TYPE of post (Bug, Question, Guide, etc.)
    • Regular tags for describing the CONTENT (nodejs, database, api, etc.)

    These should work together, not replace each other.

    That's why I think native topic prefixes would complement the existing tag system rather than limit it.

    Am I missing something about how the whitelist could work alongside regular tags?

  • Then you would need to build it as a custom plugin. There is no functionality in core to filter topics based on a prefix.


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