[bobdobbs]

Hi all.

I’ve been asked to create a forum that should be visible only to members.
It should entirely hidden to the public.

I understand that this can be done with bbPress for the forum, and a plugin (or two?) to keep the forum entirely out of view of the public.

I’d also like to make the registration process as smooth as possible.

A form will be presented to applicants.

Upon approval, I’d like to give successful applicants immediate forum access, without them having to register manually.

I haven’t checked yet, but I imagine that an admin should be able to create users manually and send them membership details (after which they will be prompted to create a secure password).

My questions:

* What are the best tools for create privacy?
ie, ensuring that the forum will be invisible to anyone except registered forum members?

* What might I need to know about creating a membership-approval flow that matches the one I’ve described above? Apart from a form-creation plugin, will I need any other third-party tools?

* Are there any ‘gotchas’ I should be concerned about when building a hidden private forum?

Thanks.

[Robin W]

Step by step guide to setting up a bbPress forum – Part 1

item 6 describes what you want to know, but in essence just set the forums to ‘private’

If you need a more complicated setup, then use

Private groups

For users, if you are setting up manually, then you just need to create them in wordpress (bbpress just uses wordpress users and login), just make sure you’ve turned off auto registration in

dashboard>settings>general>membership is unticked

and that in

dashboard>settings>forums>Roles is ticked and users assigned the participant role