[jelavelle]

Hi guys,

I’d like to lock certain threads to non-logged in users but keep them visible along with the public topics. Because we’re keen to attract new members, we want to show them a) that we’re not a dead forum b) the topics are interesting and worthwhile and c) they can still view the public threads without becoming members.

I’ve installed the private groups plugin but I haven’t been able to select threads this way. Am I missing something, or is this even possible?

Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Thanks

WP Version 4.9.1
BBPress 2.5.14

[Robin W]

thanks fro your post – I’m author of private groups.

When you say ‘lock certain threads to non-logged in users’ – are you allowing anonymous posting?

[jelavelle]

Thanks for the reply Robin.

No, we’re not allowing anonymous posting on ‘public’ threads. We just want to control what members/non-members can see. Does that make sense?

[Robin W]

sort of but not quite 🙂

if you don’t allow anonymous posting, then all threads are ‘locked’ to non-logged in users.

Can you explain further with an example – just me not understanding I expect

[jelavelle]

Ha! Sorry, been a long day 😉

We want non-members to only view entire threads that we designate as public, without being able to post anonymously. But we still want them to appear in the forum index, rather than disappearing entirely as BBPress private groups does when setting a thread to ‘private’.

There might be one thread, for example, that we feel is interesting to the general public and we want non-members to see. However, there are going to be a few threads with information that we generally wouldn’t want non-members to see, only people who have a proven interest in our forums.

I know it’s a bit of a long-shot, but worth a try 🙂

[Robin W]

ok, so the forum is visible as existing, but non-logged-in can only see designated threads, other threads are not visible until they log in.

Trying to think how easy that would be to achieve

I’ll come back…

[jelavelle]

Exactly that. Bit of a weird one, I know!

Appreciate your thoughts and replies.

[Robin W]

I’ve been thinking this over, and can’t see a simple way to achieve this.

To get something working would involve adding extra fields to a topics meta data, and then filtering the display to catch.

With the forum visible in effect the code for a forum or set of forums would need to (by default) make a topic private using an additional field, and then all the display parameters would need to hide it unless made public. That means closing every back door in search, profiles, displays, freshness all widgets and other areas so that no-one sees it unless set to public, which is one hell of a lot of work, and a large re-write of many bbpress functions.

I could modify my private groups plugin which makes forums (but not content) visible, so that certain topics are shown, but again it is a heap of code. Beyond free help I’m afraid, but if you want to look at that route contact me via my website http://www.rewweb.co.uk