What I want to do is have a few forums with different visibility and use functions. The problem is that every way I have found how to do this thus far requires me editing the user’s role, which is not what I want to do. This will quickly become too bloated for me. I would rather use some other kind of meta information.

The main reason is because I will something akin to the following:

-Most of the forums (100% visible to all members and public; only members may post)

-Special Forum (100% visible to all members and public; only SOME members may post)

-Restricted Completely Forum (0% visible to public and general members; SOME members may see and post)

It is important to mention that the members who can see the restricted areas are not necessarily admins or moderators. Also we use WP for all kinds of things aside from just bbPress and I heavily use User Role Editor already. I have, for example, two users who have a special role that allows them to edit items in the store. One of these users will eventually have access to the restricted forum; the other will not and will have no idea it exists. Neither of these users are moderators or admins on the fourm. You can see how at this point relying on user roles to accomplish this task is unrealistic.

What I wouldn’t mind doing is some kind of meta way of doing this. I have a few ideas but I wanted to ask if anybody else has done this or knows of a way to potentially do this before I start mucking around and potentially breaking things.

Thank you!

[Themes CommunityMember @noerman 1 year, 4 months ago]

You can use Members plugin or User Role Editor plugins or use both. (I find easy to use both when creating or managing role)

Let say you will have membership system as follows: (no need to be moderator or administrator here and no forum private setting needed here)

Public Forums Area

-> Guest Member (public)

-> Participant Member (default member)

-> No custom setting but make sure each forums is not hidden or private.

-> Make sure this Participant Member role able to

-> publish_replies

-> publish_topics

-> edit_topics

-> edit_replies

-> assign_topic_tags

-> read

Special Forums Area

-> Participant Member can read here

-> Special Member, you need to upgrade from Participant member

-> No custom setting but make sure each forums is not hidden or private.

-> Make sure this Special Member role able to

-> publish_replies

-> publish_topics

-> edit_topics

-> edit_replies

-> assign_topic_tags

-> read

Restricted Forums Area

-> VIP Member

-> Custom setting, make sure each forums hidden.

-> Make sure this Special Member role able to

-> publish_replies

-> publish_topics

-> edit_topics

-> edit_replies

-> assign_topic_tags

-> read

-> read_hidden_forums

And the most important to make sure you edit all forums and topics based on above setting, just edit it and you have Members plugin setting.

Try activate members plugins and tick ‘Enable the role manager’ and ‘Enable the content permissions feature’ and when you edit a forum or topic a Members setting appears. Use it to restrict roles.

[tyskkvinnaMember @tyskkvinna 1 year, 4 months ago]

Please clarify to me if I’ve misread this, but each user can only have ONE role, correct?

Which is why I wanted a way to do this without altering member roles. Because I have a fair quantity of members with a unique role already (I heavily use User Role Editor).

Like I said… I have two users who have a custom role already: StoreItems. So they can edit items in the store from a different plugin. Their bbpress membership is normal. One of these users will eventually have VIP and the other will have Special.

In order to do as you instructed, I will have to make some convoluted things happen.

[ealltechMember @ealltech 1 year, 4 months ago]

And the most important to make sure you edit all forums and topics based on above setting, just edit it and you have Members plugin setting.