3.7 Groups directory

[Shanj]

When testing the new 3.7 my major criticism along with others us that the Groups are isolated from the forums which are the core of VB.
A workaround I think is to have certain forums link to the Groups.

However Groups are likely to be many more than the number of desired forums. That is one forum per Group is unlikely to be workable (though one Group per forum might be a runner!) Depends whether you have user created Groups or not.

If the Groups could be displayed in categories on their listing page
[which would be desirable in itself]
then each category could have a forum it feeds into and from.

e.g. Categories for Home Business Ideas
or Dept 1 Dept 2 Dept 3 - whatever your types or major groupings are.

At present Groups can generate a simple list that is searchable but not clear at a glance what kind of groups there are.

So, could we have a mod for the groups listing page that allows admin set headings?
Also showing number under that heading, and perhaps if perfectionist, the last 5 new groups? or up to 5 groups if no more than 5 (admin set number)

Clicking the heading opens list of all groups in that heading
PLUS the directory of headings still displays at top.

When creating a group the ideal option is to select up to (admin set?) number of headings, say 3 or 5 because one category rarely does justice to an item.

Once we have this - which would be an excellent mod on its own
we can add bbcode to the description of the group so as to insert a link to its forum. OR maybe the same mod can make the description to display a forum URL
- this would be either a category forum as above,
or for smaller communities with admin/ mod created groups, a forum generated in a category forum "Groups" one forum per group.
Would need asdmin option to override and assign an existing forum to a category of groups/ individual group.