[tgreer]

Let's be clear on our terms: a "Category" is a forum that contains other forums. You control whether a forum is a true forum, or a category, in your AdminCP.

When you link directly to a category, what you get is a forumdisplay page, listing all the forums within a category.

For example: http://www.tgreer.com/printforum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

vs. : http://www.tgreer.com/printforum/forumdisplay.php?f=3

That was your original question, how to do this. The way I do this is to create some buttons in my navbar template, with each button set to link to a specific Category.

If your first post was incorrect, and instead you want THREE levels of forum:

meta-category | category | forum

and want to organize your "meta-categories" with conditionals, then I'm sorry, I can't help you with that.