I’m seeing the same thing as originally reported by @mfiguerasma.
I first noticed it when my non-admin user (TestUser) *suddenly* could no longer see a topic that he had formerly been able to see. In my case, I am using sub-forums. (See: https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2191#comment:17 )
I have a BP Group called GroupH.
The group forum root is a type=category group called “Group Forums”
Subforum1-GroupH is under the forum “GroupH”.
GroupH is the group forum, i.e the one you see in a the drop-down in the settings where you select which forum is associated with the BP Group.
So, it’s:
Group Forums
GroupH
Subforum1-GroupH
Topic1-Subforum1-GroupH
All of the forums and subforums have a Visibility setting of Private (in the admin settings screens).
So Topic1-Subforum1-GroupH was accessible by my TestUser one minute and then wasn’t the next minute. I knew that I hadn’t changed the visibility settings on my forums or anything else, but I realized that what I had done (thinking it was merely “for good measure”) was to run:
Tools->bbPress->Recalculate private and hidden forums
I recreated my original scenario, verified that TestUser could access Topic1-Subforum1-GroupH, and then used Updraft to take snapshots of my database before running “Recalculate private and hidden forums” calculate again. Sure enough, after that “repair”, it was broken again.
So I debugged it. This repair tool kicks off bbp_repair_forum_visibility() which updates two options in the options table:
_bbp_private_forums
_bbp_hidden_forums
These are pre-calculated, cached, lists of forums.
If the forum_id for GroupH appears in _bbp_hidden_forums, then TestUser won’t be able to access Topic1-Subforum1-GroupH. Before running this “repair”, the forum_id for GroupH does not appear in that list. After the repair it does.
So, how is the forum_id for GroupH getting into this list of hidden forums when the post_status on the forum is most definitely private? (Verified by looking at its row in the posts table)
It’s getting there precisely by the means @mfiguerasma showed.
When the query is being run to get a list of all “hidden” forums, in order to create _bbp_hidden_forums, it invokes the pre_get_posts filter. bbPress uses that filter bbp_pre_get_posts_normalize_forum_visibility() to change the query_vars.
Notice what’s happening here:
(1) The WP_Query is saying “I am trying to find a list of *hidden* forums” (I have my own reasons for why I want a list of hidden forums.)
(2) But bbp_pre_get_posts_normalize_forum_visibility() seems to be second-guessing. I receives query_vars with post_type=hidden, but then the way its logic works is to say: “What are various post statuses that this user has permission to see. Ah, this user can see both hidden and private ones, so I’ll update the query_vars to include post_types of both hidden and private.”
I think the logic of bbp_pre_get_posts_normalize_forum_visibility() is exactly backwards. It’s trying to include all of the post_types that the user can access. But that’s not why it has been invoked. It’s been invoked in the process of simply creating a list of hidden forums for _bbp_hidden_forums and its messing that up by including the private post_status.
(3) So what the WP_Query gets back is a list of forum_ids for all hidden *and private* groups. And that’s the list that ultimately gets stored in _bbp_hidden_forums.
So this “repair” actually breaks my forums.
If you simply remove this bbPress filter before doing the repair, it seems to produce the correct result. My TestUser can access Topic1-Subforum1-GroupH both before and after the repair when we remove the filter:
remove_action(‘pre_get_posts’,’bbp_pre_get_posts_normalize_forum_visibility’,4);
