Currently, App developers can create new categories that then are displayed in various locations.

This is fine, but we also need a new kind of "curated category" that app store maintainers provide and curate over time. Users will be able to associate their Apps with "curated categories" but will not be able to create new "curated categories."

These "curated categories" should be stored in an easy-to-edit file within the code base. When app stores are deployed or updated, these curated categories need to be added or updated within the code base accordingly. The add-and-update process must also be intelligent enough to remove categories that become obsolete. This means that any existing App that has a retired "curated category" will need to be updated in the database.

Curated categories will themselves be grouped into curated category types.

For example - "scientific application" is a "curated category type". Examples of "curated categories" belonging to the curated category type of "scientific application" could include "ChIP-Seq" and "RNA-Seq" and "epigenetics" and "homology search"

Another "curated category type" is "IGB interface," which refers to the part of the IGB user interface that gets enhanced when the App is installed.

Examples of "IGB interface" curated categories include: "Adds a tab" and "Tools menu"

Thoughts on implementation:

• Determine the best way to add this new kind of "curated category" to the code base
• To avoid making our existing Django app folders even more heinously complicated, can introduces this as a (mostly) stand-alone Django app "curated_categories" with its own models.py file and so forth?
• Don't muck about with the existing "user provided" App categories. Ignore this for now.
• Curated categories can have foreign keys to IGB apps, but not the other way around.

Once this is fully implemented, we will make changes to the user interface. We will create a home page that shows a hyperlinked listing of "curated category types" and the "curated categories" beneath them. When uses click on an entry in this listing, a filter will be applied that shows just the apps that the selected entry points to.

As always, before implementing this functionality, search Django world for Django apps with related functionality.