How do I get up to 4 Parent and Multiple Child Categories to work?

I had a good wordpress 2.7.1 version database going that worked amazingly with the RSS and social networking blogs; but there were a couple of things that I need that I think between trying to figure out the two I crashed it, which is why I had to build https://www.onguys.com/blue in it’s place.

I’ll make another forum post about the SEO part because there’s a lot to that. For this particular forum post, I would like to focus on the concern with the categories.

I need a parent category for:
1. Studio Name
2. Director Name
3. Actor Name
4. Discontinued Titles

Under each parent category the child categories will vary:
for instance under Studio Name would be literally the name of the production company or studio that sent us the screener we posted the review of the film title with the only monetary compensation being an affiliate program code link which to date doesn’t work so in the 7 years we’ve run the MS-Frontpage version which is well indexed by the search engines only generates between $150 – $300 a year, 2008 was a lot worse at only $68 so you can see why we’re wanting to convert to a better system with wordpress.

We also really like the search engine field, the rss feed, categorization, auto-archiving and the option for our readers to leave their own opinions in the comments for each review we post thus giving our reviews a multifacited option and not just a one sided view the way the frontpage version always was because none of these options were really functional or worked worth anything in MS-Frontpage 2000 or 2003.

Sorry, I’m getting side tracked.

We were talking about the child sub-categories:
under each parent category we want sub-categories related to the parent category (studio name, director name, actor name, or in the case of Discontinued probably wouldn’t need subcategories since it’s pretty self explanatory of it’s own.

What I would like to do is check mark for each review multiple parent and child categories without crashing the database:
for instance:
1. one studio name, or in the case of those companies that are huge and distribute for sub-sidiary studio names possibly two check marks here
2. under directors name there would only be one, except in the rare situation that there are multiple directors collaborating on the film title being reviewed, but in the 7 years we’ve been doing these reviews in our spare time that has only happened with 5 titles, so it’s very rare indeed for that to happen.
3. The one that seems to cause the biggest problem is the parent category Actors Name, because the child categories would be each actors name and it’s very common for there to be anywhere from 7 to 10 actors per film title.

Ideally, the whole point behind why we want to do our categories this way is to ease our reader’s online experience. One of the main reasons why Brian and I started https://www.onguyscom and go publicly by the name of Alex Pearson together for O.G. Product Review even though as a dot.com we don’t make enough to even cover the cost of running the site and have to pay for the expenses out of what we earn from our day jobs. But I’m getting side tracked, the whole point behind the reviews we write is because we got tired of the way so many other review sites were set up and how hard it was to find what titles a particular director did, or in many cases a particular actor’s name what film titles they were in.

The other part that we really didn’t like and motivated us to put the MS-Frontpage version together in 2002 was because the reviews we did find were so mean and bitter that it really made us feel sorry for the poor people who poured their hearts, sweat, blood and tears into these films. Which is why ours tend to be nicer, or at least we try to be, sometimes though even we can’t be to glowing.

The comments section in wordpress 2.7.1 is a godsend because it will give a multi-perspective view to our reviews which the MS-Frontpage version just simply can not support (we tried).

We would love to be able to give our readers the functionality of being able to click on the parent category which would give a drop down list for the child categories under that and be able to choose from their what name they are looking for and see all of the reviews we have posted for that particular child category.

The search field option helps with this, that’s also a function that wordpress does so much better, and MS-Frontpage just doesn’t support well at all.

If you could help us by letting us know:
1. what plug-in allows for drop down commands for the categories
2. how we can generate such in depth categories without crashing our database supporting our film reviews that would be greatly appreciated.

Again, our goal is for our reader’s online experience to the best it can be. That is why we are wanting to migrate out of MS-Frontpage to WordPress, but are running into some technical concerns like this one that are making the transition difficult.

I’m not sure how to get the forums to send me an email update when someone replies back to this forum, so please feel free to email me directly with your suggestions at [email protected] ; if you happen to know how to turn on the auto-notification in the www.remarpro.com support forums so that when someone replies to a forum post a user submits, please let me know I really want to turn that on.

Again, My partner and I only run our site in our spare time, we have regular mundane careers that pay for our living, this site is something that we developed on the side and has yet to prove self-supporting, between the hosting fees, the p.o. box fees, the taxes and periodically having to replace the computers because we keep wearing out the dvd drives and modems we have yet to make a profit on this site. Literally we had to put $3,000 on one of our credit cards to replace the computers because we had literally wore them out, and it’s getting about that time again our warranty on the laptops we have now expires 12-03-2009 and we haven’t even finished paying these off yet, and we’ll end up being out more money again replacing these soon too. All part of it I guess, but it just gives our friends here at www.remarpro.com the inside track, why we went with wordpress 2.7.1 over adobe which is way out of our price range at $5,0000 for the Creative Master Suite that would be a big help to us, but we just can’t afford it.

If anyone can be of help regarding the category concern that will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Onguys