Today we've updated the NodeBB community forum onto the `remote-categories` testing branch, which means that users on the open social web that identify themselves as "Groups" will be rendered in NodeBB as **categories**. Prior to this, they looked like users.
Here are some examples of remote categories:
* [Comic Strips (on lemmy.ml)](https://community.nodebb.org/category/comicstrips@lemmy.world)
* [Star Trek Social Club (on startrek.website)](https://community.nodebb.org/category/startrek@startrek.website)
* [Social Web Foundation (a WordPress blog)](https://community.nodebb.org/category/swf@socialwebfoundation.org)
ActivityPub "groups" and forum categories have quite a few things in common — they don't usually post topic themselves, they "contain" topics, and they are usually administered by a separate group of users (moderators!) In many ways, these groups lend themselves to categories much more easily than they do as users.
### Notes:
* We will likely be releasing this as v4.3.0-alpha this Wednesday. Probably this means you don't want this on a live forum just yet.
* A lot of the backend logic is complete, but a lot of the frontend UX will be worked on.
* You can "search" for categories (via ["in categories" in the search page](https://community.nodebb.org/search?in=categories)), paste the full handle in order to instruct NodeBB to pull a new category in.
* You can now no longer mention a remote category. Instead, create your topic **right in that category itself**. As it should be
.* Remote content coming in that is slotted into a remote category will still show up in [your "world" feed](https://community.nodebb.org/world). That is still intended to be where discovery of content outside the local NodeBB instance will take place.
* Report any bugs or confusing behaviours (and there will be some) here.
### Screenshots
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