Course Categories

Course categories help organize your course catalog, making it easier for learners to find relevant courses.

Creating a Category

1. From the administration panel, navigate to Course categories

2. Click Add category

3. Enter:

   • Category code — A short unique identifier

   • Category name — The display name (e.g., "Information Technology", "Management Skills")

   • Allow adding courses in this category? — Whether it allows courses to set this as a category, or it just serves as an intermediate level in a hierarchy

   • Parent category — (Optional) Place this category under another category to create a hierarchy

   • Description — (Optional)

   • Image — (Optional) Will represent this category, although it almost doesn't show anywhere

4. Press Add category

Chamilo creates 3 categories by default: Language skills, PC Skills and Projects. These can be renamed, removed or kept, depending on your needs.

Category Hierarchy

The course categories management page showing a nested tree of categories

Categories can be nested to create a tree structure:

• Business

  • Management

  • Marketing

  • Finance

• Technology

  • Programming

  • Networking

  • Cybersecurity

Learners browsing the course catalog can navigate through this hierarchy to find courses.

Managing Categories

• Edit — Change the category name, code, or parent

• Move — Change the position of a category in the list

• Delete — Remove a category. Courses in a deleted category are moved to "uncategorized."

Tips

• Keep it simple — Use broad categories that learners can understand at a glance

• Limit depth — Avoid deeply nested categories. Two or three levels are usually sufficient.

• Assign categories during course creation — Encourage teachers to select a category when creating courses, so the catalog stays organized