Please help! I’m trying to add these features to my social media site’s feed:

• An add a post page with a standard add a post form (add media and/or text) with the option to upload that post to a specific category or taxonomy term, like “covid-19” in “news”, “super bowl” in “sports”, “Jim Carey” in “comedy”, or “movies” in “entertainment”. Basically creating categories for the feed and having more than one public feed that users can add a post to. In the above case, you have the option of posting to one of 4 feeds total, while there are a total of 8 categories or taxonomies

• A home/user feed page with a (drop down) filter to filter the user’s feed/posts by:

  • Show a specific taxonomy term like “news”, “sports”, “comedy”, or “entertainment”, and then be able to select the taxonomy term/category for each. For example, the user select “news”, then selects “covid-19”, it should display all posts/feed for “covid-19” in “news”, which it is able to do because users select a taxonomy/category to upload their post to as a part of the add a new post form/process mentioned above
  • Show ALL posts/filter off, this should display all of the posts/feed made by any user. Basically an option for a standard social media feed.

This is my current setup:

• MAMP stack (Mac, Apache/nginx, MySQL/Maria, PHP) (currently on DDEV)

• Drupal 9, using OPEN SOCIAL distribution (^11.0)

This is what I’ve tried:

• Installed and setup Open Social distribution (comes with a page LINK for adding posts and a standard home/user feed page WITHOUT FILTER already setup)

• setting up the names of the taxonomy terms (“news”, “sports”, “comedy”, and “entertainment”, with a few specifics inside the taxonomy term’s fields like “covid-19” field in news taxonomy, “nfl” field in sports taxonomy, “World Cup” field in sports taxonomy, “standup comedy” field in comedy taxonomy, “movies” in entertainment taxonomy. HOWEVER AM CONFUSED ON IF THIS IS THE CORRECT SETUP USING FIELDS inside of taxonomy terms. I imagine it should be a taxonomy term within a taxonomy term but don’t see this as an option? Is this even possible to do with taxonomy terms or should I use custom code/ something else?)

• looked into webforms module and features of the forms in core. What would I need to add to this/these or what other solutions/ custom code can achieve the features I need?

• I’ve also looked into using the group feature which is already installed in the Open Social distribution I’m using (not sure if it’s in core or not) but I’m not positive if it would be a solution to what I need. I was wondering if there’s a way to achieve these features using this along with taxonomy or maybe just using groups as the taxonomy terms like “news” and “sports” and adding the specifics like “covid” and “Boxing” somehow into those groups, or making those specifics the taxonomy terms? If this still won’t work, what other solutions/ custom code should I go with?

I’m very sorry I’m still pretty new to Drupal but I’m assuming the solution is a combination of Taxonomy terms, forms, and views (any help with views greatly appreciated), and maybe added code/other or the group module included in Open Social? ANY help or input is greatly appreciated. Thank you to anyone who reads this in advance!