From another post: “Any update on why the Private Forum plugin will revert to Open For All?” I’ve searched for ages on this one, as Private Forums keeps loosing its settings every time I go to the Admin plugins page and use another plugin. Eg., I go to plugins, change only Avatar Upload settings, and Private Forums then lets anyone enter all forums.

Has anyone fixed this? Have I missed a thread explaining how? Would really appreciate help on this as I need privacy for community sector groups defined as potentially ‘At Risk’.

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

I used to use Private Forum myself, and that drove me crazy!

I switched to Hidden Forums, which has all the same features without that annoying quirk (where the private forum opens up when the admin is touched):

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/hidden-forums/

I’ve been using Hidden Forums for months now, and the private data has been secure the entire time… it definitely seems more robust and secure.

[@michael3185 Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Thanks, though I did try Hidden Forums on my 0.9.0.4 bbPress. It didn’t work as expected, hiding the first forum when it shouldn’t have done. I’ll give it another look though, as Private Forums is going to have me demented within a week.

[edit]

From my other topic on Bad Behaviour just now: I did have Akismet, Skip Akismet for admins, and Bad Behaviour too, but have now removed these. Interestingly enough, Private Forums now works perfectly, even when I disable and re-enable other plugins or change their settings.

Private Forums looks and works exactly as my inexperienced forum users expect. A consistent interface is far less worrying to technophobes than various displays appearing when triggered by different plugins. Private forums are just marked with an asterix, and all not-logged-in ‘errors’ now go to the same page, which looks identical to the rest of the theme, asking the user to register/log-in.

You can see what I mean at http://letsdoo.org Select a private forum to see the display. Then go back, view the Important Information forum, view a topic, then select ‘Key Master’ (for profile) or ‘PM this user’; same display. (This is a more open forum than the other, but I set a few forums as private to keep community bods happy).

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Ah strange – for me, Private Forums and Hidden Forums provided an identical experience to the end-user… the only difference was the security loophole. I went to letsdoo.org to see if I could spot the functionality difference, but wasn’t able to see it…

A word of warning, btw – Private Forums would often retain its security for long periods of time… then randomly, changing an admin setting would revert all of its forums to public. I could never figure out the exact trigger – after the second or third time it happened, I gave up on it and upgraded to HF.

[@michael3185 Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

I’ve tried messing around in Admin in all sorts of ways, and cannot get Private Forums to reset again now. However, in case it might in future, I’ve installed Hidden Forums to test that. I got the impression it hid the forums from guests completely, but I may be wrong as it has a forum label (which I’ve changed to an asterix to keep things subtle). It fails though. I have the following set up in the php file;

$hidden_forums=array(2,3,4,5,7); // hide these forums, list by comma seperated number

$hidden_forums=array(‘keymaster’,’administrator’);

$hidden_forums[2]=array(‘administrator’,’moderator’, ‘member’);

$hidden_forums[3]=array(‘administrator’,’moderator’, ‘member’);

$hidden_forums[4]=array(‘administrator’,’moderator’, ‘member’);

$hidden_forums[5]=array(‘administrator’,’moderator’, ‘member’);

$hidden_forums[7]=array(‘administrator’,’moderator’, ‘member’);

$hidden_forums=”*”;

But on accessing the front page I get;

Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/letsdoo/public_html/MB/my-plugins/hidden-forums/hidden-forums.php on line 37

Have I misunderstood the instructions..?

[edit]

I disabled it, and re-enabled Private Forums, and the latter came back with all settings intact and works fine. Hmm…

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Can you check to see if you have the latest version of “My Views” installed?

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/my-views/

You need at least 0.1.1 for Hidden Forums to work properly… I remember I used to get an error from Hidden Forums until I upgraded the My Views plugin.

If that’s not the issue, I’m officially stumped!

[@michael3185 Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Yep, I’m only using my-views-started-participated-topics.php, and that’s version 0.1.2 I’ve been trying to break Private Forums, and am happy with its easy admin interface, so will go with that for now I think. I’ll remember to keep an eye on it any time I change anything in admin though.