[Anton Rahman]

thanks again for your valued assistance, this vb:if condition you suggested is interesting and seems to have an actual effect on the 1st generation children of the main forum categories, so when we tried it with "$page['channelid'] != 1" the effect is it remove all formatting and also the thumbnail icons next to each of the 1st generation children of the main forum + it creates a duplicate of each and puts it right under each of itself
So among the so many things it does IT DID'T hide neither 1st generation children of the main forum nor the 1st generation children of the main forum "i.e the channels where user can post"

and when we tried it with any other number for ['channelid'] ! , like lets say 2 or 3 or even 20 and 20 in particular is the node ID of one of the 1st generation children categories we intend to hide off of the home page NOTHING HAPPENS

What did we miss pls ??
Also as we described earlier in this post we have X PARENT CATEGORIES under which we have X children CATEGORIES of the X PARENT CATEGORIES then finally X CHANNELS that are the children of the children of the parent categories so what are the node id we will use in "$page['channelid'] != "? those of the parent categories ? or the 1st generation children or the 2nd generation children ?
is there a vb code that targets channels ACTING AS CATEGORIES AND ARE NOT CHILDREN OF ANOTHER ? ie root CATEGORIES ? cz more or less in the course of your brilliant suggestions we may have bumped into something that looks like that in display_Forums_list template when you helped us improving that vb template earlier

--------------- Added [DATE]1514388394[/DATE] at [TIME]1514388394[/TIME] ---------------

An interesting follow through on you post

Originally Posted by Seven Skins

May be you are looking for this ...

edit display_Forums_list template and comment out this block of code. This code is from vb 5.3.4

        <vb:if condition="!empty($forum['subchannels'])">
            <!-- Sub-Forums -->
            <tr class="subforum-list"><td colspan="4">
                <div class="subforum-header h-clear">{vb:rawphrase sub_forums}:</div>
                <table>
                {vb:set cols, 1}
                <vb:each from="forum.subchannels" value="subforum">
                    <vb:if condition="(($cols - 1) % $subChannelsPerRow == 0)">
                        <tr>
                    </vb:if>
                    {vb:set colspan, ''}
                    <vb:if condition="($cols == count($forum['subchannels'])) AND (($remaining = ($cols % $subChannelsPerRow)) != 0)">
                        {vb:set colspan, {vb:concat 'colspan="', {vb:math {vb:raw subChannelsPerRow} - {vb:raw remaining} + 1}, '"'}}
                    </vb:if>
                            <td class="subforum-item" data-lastcontent="{vb:raw subforum.lastcontent.created}" data-channel-id="{vb:raw subforum.nodeid}" {vb:raw colspan}>
                                <div class="subforum-info">
                                    <span class="icon<vb:if condition="!empty($subforum['is_new'])"> new</vb:if>"></span>
                                    <a href="{vb:url {vb:raw subforum.routeid}}" class="subforum-title">{vb:raw subforum.title}</a>
                                    <span class="counts">({vb:number {vb:raw subforum.topics}}/{vb:number {vb:raw subforum.posts}})</span>
                                </div>
                            </td>
                    <vb:if condition="($cols % $subChannelsPerRow == 0) OR $cols == count($forum['subchannels'])">
                        </tr>
                    </vb:if>
                    {vb:set cols, {vb:math {vb:var cols} + 1}}
                </vb:each>
                </table>
            </td></tr>
        </vb:if>

if you move the comment two lines up , thus commenting as well the following :

{vb:template display_Forums_item, forum={vb:raw forum}, forumLevel={vb:raw forumLevel}, isSubcategory={vb:raw isSubcategory}, avatar={vb:raw userThumbAvatars}}

the result on home page is EXACTLY what we needed i.e only topmost parents are shown and any children of that are perfectly hidden on home page

caves eat is : they are all the way hidden , meaning you cant navigate through clicking the main parents to to open the children in the next page !!

so simply the children became hidden all the way !