Neither the Discus license nor the Discus software itself arbitrarily limits the number of topics, users, messages, etc., that can be contained on a discussion board. In this sense, Discus allows you to create as many topics, users, and messages as you desire.

Practically speaking, the maximum number of topics you can create on your board depends on your disk quota and the capacity of your server to handle the visits to your board. Each topic takes space on your disk to store its messages and related data. Users, when they visit the board, will view the topics list. Many features of Discus read the topics list as well, and some display topics as options (e.g., selecting e-mail notification).

There are known instances of Discus boards with over 100 topics that function well. However, as the number of topics becomes large, the speed of dynamic functions (searching, for example) can be slowed. The speed of reading messages is never affected, except by the bandwidth of your server. Also, a larger board may become difficult to administer if you are responsible for several hundred or several thousand topics. So while there is not an absolute limit on the number of topics a Discus board can support, we encourage users to be prudent to ensure the manageability of their discussion boards.