I don’t know if this is a question for bbPress, bbPress WP Tweaks, or iThemes Exchange Membership, but I’ll start with bbPress.

I have multiple forums, one private. I’m using the bbPress WP Tweaks plugin for my forum sidebar and restricting access to all forums through Exchange Membership.

The private forum is hidden from the forum list, which is what I expected and what I want.
The private forum cannot be accessed from my menu link (although I need to figure out how to get rid of the “oops message), which is also expected behavior.

However, recent topics and recent replies in the sidebar both show links to a topic from the private forum to non-members of the forum. That is, the sidebar shows topics for every forum, even the private one, and even to non-members. Clicking the links for topics/replies from the private forum returns the “oops message” and so non-members can’t actually link to the forum that way, but I don’t want anyone who’s not a member of the private forum to even see topic titles. Everything in the private forum should be private.

Additionally, using the search box in the sidebar brings up both topics and replies to content from the private forum–not merely links, but the topics and replies themselves, as if they weren’t part of a private forum. This is true whether or not the user is logged in.

Exchange Membership allows me to restrict access to replies and topics, but only globally; topics and replies can’t be restricted on a forum-by-forum basis.

1. So, is there a setting I’m missing in bbPress to make replies and topics private inside a private forum? Is it standard for members of other forums to be able see the titles of topics of a private forum or allow access through search? (Or if you think this is being caused by the bbPress WP Tweaks plugin and you have any ideas for a fix, that would be great.)

2. Also, can I change the “oops, that page can’t be found” message or redirect users to another page when they click on the link to a private forum? Exchange Membership already has something set up to prevent access to protected pages/posts (with a message I can change), and that works if a non-member tries to access a public forum. But something about the private forum settings/setup produces a different redirect. I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks for your help.

Wordpress: 4.0
bbPress: 2.5.4
bbPress WP Tweaks: 1.3.1
iThemes Exchange: 1.10.6
Exchange Membership Add-on: 1.2.8
My site: The Editor’s Blog Members

The Member Forum is public, the Pro Forum private. The topic–Can Sally See This Topic–is from the Pro Forum and shouldn’t be seen by or accessible to the Member Forum.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 1 month ago]

you need my plugin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbp-private-groups/

membership plugins on their own do not protect from widgets and searches.

[@readwriteandedit Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Thank you, Robin. I’ll give that a try later tonight, and I’ll let you know the outcome.

[@readwriteandedit Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Robin,

I added the Private Group plugin. And I removed the sidebar so I wouldn’t have a list of recent topics or recent replies. That leaves only the forum search box to consider.

I’ve got one private forum–visibility for the forum is set to private (and I did not check visibility on the Private Group settings page), I have a forum group checked on the forum page, and in Exchange Membership I restricted the content to forum members only.

However, through the search box on the public forum page, I can still search for words from a test topic in the private forum, and the topic and reply-to forum comments show in the search results. I can get this result while not being logged in to the site.

my site: The Editor’s Blog Members

link to the public forum page: Editor’s Blog Member Forum

If you type Sally in the search box in this public forum, it returns a topic and reply from the private Pro Editors forum. I was expecting to see a no topics found message. The Exchange Membership plugin did insert a message about the page being restricted, but those who aren’t members of the private forum can still see the titles of topics and replies, the topic itself, and the name and Gravatar of the topic author and the person who replied.

I tried this in multiple browsers, with me not logged on. And I deleted browsing histories and cookies.

I’m obviously missing something. What else can I do to hide private forum topics and replies from search results?

Thanks for your help.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 1 month ago]

may be a conflict between the Exchange Membership plugin and mine.

Try deactivating the exchange plugin as a test and see if that fixes. That would confirm a conflict or not

[@readwriteandedit Participant 10 years, 1 month ago]

Robin,

After deactivating and activating and messing around, I discovered the problem was solely my fault. While I’d set the parent forum to private, none of the child forums had been marked private. If you want them private, they all need to be private.

My apologies for taking up your time for my own error.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 1 month ago]

Hey no problem, glad you’re fixed !!