Some of you may have noticed that you can only create forums 2 levels deep; you can create sub forums within main page forums, but you can't create anything inside these sub forums. NOT ANYMORE! I'm gonna show you how to create the illusion of doing so, using Forum Rules!

1. Create a new category. Call it "Hidden Board" or something like that, and set the state to "Hidden" (later you may change it to "Disable". Read this to find out why).

2. In this new category, create the forums that you want to be sub forums of your sub forum. Eg. If you want to create a "Purchase an Image" forum inside a "Image Stores" forum, which in turn is inside a "Graphics and Images" forum, you create the "Purchase an Image" forum in the hidden category.

3. Create a redirect forum to the "Purchase an Image" forum. Place it somewhere visible on the main page for easy access (for now).

4. Go VIEW | SOURCE (IE) or VIEW | PAGE SOURCE (FireFox).

5. Scroll through your source code until you find the redirect forum (Ctrl + F, then type its name). You will find something like this:

Copy paste everything between the comments EXACTLY. Change the number that is now bold to something like ??? or ### or 123. Add a <table> at the start, and a </table> at the end.DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.

6. Find the sub forum you wanted to create a sub forum within (in our example, this is "Image Stores". Click FORUM RULES.

7. Set the title as anything (a full stop "." works well here). Set the state as "Show Full Text". For the rules, insert the code you copy pasted in step 5. Edit nothing.

8. Go to the 2nd level sub forum ("Purchase an Image"). In the forum rules, insert a link back to your first level sub forum ("Image Stores"), so people can get back to where they were before. Make this link stand out (just like that text :d), so your members don't accidentally find your hidden boards (solved in step one with a link to another document).

9. Delete the redirect forum you created. Open the sub forum ("Image Stores"), and you should see a redirect forum pointing you towards the next sub forum ("Purchase an Image"). To the not so experienced IF user, it look as if the sub forum is inside this sub forum. To the experienced user, it's a cool trick :d

If you need any help with this, please PM g1ggy (me).

Note: This idea was not originally mine. I first saw this in use on Nick's forum's old layout. I merely bring the tutorial to BigBoards.

Sounds like you've developed an intriguing way of doing this so that the "slight of hand" of making the sub-subforums look and function authentically is very good.

I've done something like that in my Sub-subforum Technique documentation, but always wondered if there was a way to get rid of the back-links that took you to the dummy forum.

It appears you have found a way to do that. Good work! I'm looking forward to testing this out.

Thanks Helena :d

It wasn't really my idea. Nick did something like this on the old layout of his forum, I merely bring this tutorial to BigBoards.