[childofnewlight]

After having exhaustively searched for the last few nights for information on this topic, I have not been able to find an answer.

I’m currently using the most up-to-date versions of both WP and bbPress. My current website uses Joomla, rokbridge, and phpbb3.

However, I’m trying to setup a new site based on WordPress and bbPress seems like an awesome alternative to having to mess around with forum bridges for phpbb3.

I was well on my way to adopting bbPress as our new forum software. Successfully imported the phpbb forum. Just fixing things up after the import like setting categories and moving forums around into their proper place. Then I realized that private forums were now public.

‘No problem’, I though. I went to each forum settings to be amazingly disappointed that there was only three options: hidden, private, and open.

With our current phpbb setup I can create a group. Add people to it. Then go to the forum (or their group) and give them permission to see the group.

This is especially important as we are a Christian gaming clan. We have a private guild forum that allows members of our clan to discuss things privately amongst each other (like private vent login info). We also have an officer forum that lets us candidly discuss potential applicants.

I would like to allow officers access to certain forums. Guild members to certain other forums. As far as I can tell, bbpress excludes this very basic ability.

I tried using the Members plugin for WordPress that is suppose to have bbpress integration. It wouldn’t work properly. At times it wouldn’t allow a role to see certain forums and other times it didn’t matter what permissions were set, it’d see it anyway.

I’m going to look at support for the Members mod, but it seems kind of silly that this wouldn’t be an integral part of a modern forum software.

Unless I’m missing something, I’ll have to stick with messing around with phpbb for now.

[BigEfromDaBx]

Funny. I was looking into this other night. Wasnt able to find anything. I was so disappointed that I am considering changing to another forum plugin unless we could achieve this using BBpress. I would like to have forums that are only available to some users. I think the only way you could do that is to make a hidden forum and then only moderators would be able to see that. But i dont want to give these users moderator acesss. The other way is hidden private forums but any participant can private forums. Please let me know if there is a solution for this. I want to say with BBpress.

[Sam Rohn]

i have a bit of background w phpbb and have recently been working w bbpress, while permissions are not quite as advanced you get close with one of the plugins listed below

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-role-editor/

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/members/

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-access-manager/

specifically, you can create a new role called something like “site mods” and give that role access to hidden or private groups and assign that role to your users as needed

[BigEfromDaBx]

Site mods is not a good example. I have a gaming clan. So I want to have a forum that only the members of my clan can see. But for my registered users who arent part of my gaming clan I want to restrict access to the forums.

[childofnewlight]

This is the problem. I need three levels of access. Registered users who can see certain forums. Members of the guild who can see certain forums. And then officers that can see others. If I created a site mod group that could see hidden or private groups it would allow clan members to be privy to officer discussions which sometimes include sensitive discussions about other members.

Likewise, there are occasionally discussions for just the guild members that I wouldn’t want anyone who signs up for our site to see, like members’ addresses or phone numbers or ventrilo login info.

[Sam Rohn]

you could try buddypress, it has more control over groups and such

with the plugins i listed, you should be able to create 1 level of private forums, just use hidden forums for clan members or site mods group, assign access to hidden forums via user role editor

have a look a this plugin too

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/groups/

you could also try a plugin called s2member which allows protection of individual forums via “URI Level Access Restrictions” this (free) plugin is intended for pay sites but you could make all levels $0 i guess

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/s2member/

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic-tag/bbpress/

but in the end, proper per forum group permissions as in phpbb etc are something i would really like to see in bbpress

for reference, from the bbpress docs –

Visibility: decide whether your forum is public, private or hidden.
Public – Anyone can see these forums
Private – Only logged in registered users can see these forums
Hidden: Only Moderators/Admins can see these forums

[Sam Rohn]

here’s a new plugin which may resolve this issue –

http://www.tehnik-design.com/bbpress-forum-permissions/

This plugin allows bbPress forums to be filtered and restricted based on the users ranks as set by the Members plugin.
The plugin will hide all forums and subforums the user does not have permissions to access.
It will display a 404 error if the user attempts to access restricted forum/topic

sam

[tajenli]

I also search for the solution for a while. I have not found any real “group” solution directly for bbPress. However, I came up with couple other solutions. I list them below in case others need them:

1. Use BuddyPress: BP is for group management with much more functions. It works great with bbPress (prob same development team). BuddyPress group users management is quite powerful. There are 3 levels of group: public, private & hidden, and 3 level of user role for group: admin, mod, member. I also suggest to add Invite Anyone plugin, so group member can invite others without “friends” limitation.

2. Use Membership from wpmuDev. This solution is similar to s2member. You can control every piece of accessibility on your site through user subscription. The subscription can be set to free. But it’s a bit too complicated for just one simple purpose.

[Robin W]

I am writing a bbpress specific solution at the moment – hope to publish in the new few weeks

[tajenli]

This is a great news from you!

[Tom Dyer]

@robin-w This could be perfect timing for a project I’m currently working on!

What do you have in mind for the solution that you’re building, and will it be publicly available? 🙂

[Robin W]

The solution I am working on gives the ability to create groups.

Users are then assigned to a single group.

Each forum can then be assigned to none, one or more groups.

So if
user a is assigned to group 1
user b to group 2
use c to group 3

and
forum x can be seen by group 1
forum y by group 1 & 3
and forum z by group 2 & 3

so group 1 users (user a) can see forums x & y
group 2 users (user b) can only see forum z
and group 3 (user c) users can see forums y & z

and yes it will be publicly available

It is working, but needs the search function to limit viewing, and then a whole tidy-up. I am trying to finish it while retaining a marriage !

[Tom Dyer]

Sounds perfect 🙂 I’d happily help but to be honest this is my first project with bbpress so I’m not sure I’d be of much assistance. Sounds like you have it under control anyway – Great stuff!

[elaborate]

It would be great to have an alternative to the Groups feature in BuddyPress so you’re not forced to use their extensive override of the bbPress profiles, which is not that well designed if you’re not interested in the rest of the package.

I can’t contribute much in the form of PHP development, but please ask if you think I could help out some other way.

[lowco2525]

It amazes me that they have not added this as a core feature of this plugin! I have a headache from trying to get this to work. I just want to be able to control who can see which forums.

[Robin W]

Ok, I’ve just finished a new plugin called

bbp Private Groups

This plugin adds private groups to the forums, allocating users to up to 8 groups, and combinations of forums to those groups, creating multiple closed forums.

download from

bbp Private Groups

Let me know what you think.

I’ll add this to the wordpress plugin repository in the next few days

[Tom Dyer]

Robin, your a star! I’ll check this out right away 🙂
Thank you so much for this, it couldn’t have come at a better time for me!

[Scorpion]

Robin? We all love you!!!
To me this is a major thing bbPress is still missing.

[Scorpion]

Well, no settings page shows up (in my german 3.9 de_DE WP)…

[Robin W]

oops – sorry will take a look and be back shortly !

[Robin W]

Thanks for your patience – simple case of link to file missing.

I have now corrected the plugin.

can you deactivate, delete and then re- download from same link as before

bbp Private Groups

[Pasquale Galasso]

Those who have tried the plugin can write an opinion?

[Pasquale Galasso]

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in C:\wamp\www\ag\wp-content\plugins\bbp-private-groups\includes\meta-box.php on line 89

[Robin W]

Thanks, I can’t replicate this – might be an issue with running it on wamp?

Anyway can you let me know when you get this – ie what were you doing at the time.

[Pasquale Galasso]

Thanf for a reply.
wamp server is a server like any other. I always try on the local machine before you send online.

This alerts appear when you try to make a new page or news.

Sorry for my english.

[Pasquale Galasso]