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Private forums howto?

 
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Hi,

I searched/red the forums for a howto on: "how to make the forums private", and I found a lot of questions, but no real solution that works for me.
I've tired them , but with JForum Beta from CVS, I can't achieve this. With version 2.0.2. is also impossible, an I saw that you made some bug fixes after 2.0.2 regarding this problem.
What do I(and others) understand under "private forums":
- No anonymous user can see/search/post forums, categories, messages.
- If new users registrate and log in, they still behave as anonymous users until an admin "activates" them. (docs about activation staps - that do not break the above "private scheme" - would be very good)

I suppose this should be possible with a forum software, but I can't figure how to do this with JForum.
I suggest to make a "sticky post" with a short "howto" or readme, about this issue, so that everyone can see this and not pose the same question again and again .

Thank you very much,

Matt.
[originally posted on jforum.net by Anonymous]
 
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Well, based on your description, I understand that what you want is a process to only accept users after some admininistrator approves its registration. For "Private Forums" I understant a set of categories and forums only visible to some users.

For now, you can remove all permissions from the "General" group, and then the Administrator can move the users to another group. This will solve your problem. The only gotcha is that there is no feature on jforum that will list "users pending aproving".

As long it is possible to make it, it's unlike I can get it done until 2.1

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]
 
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Ok, I guess I can add a feature like "List users by group". That will solve the problem.

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]
 
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Rafael Steil wrote:Well, based on your description, I understand that what you want is a process to only accept users after some admininistrator approves its registration. For "Private Forums" I understant a set of categories and forums only visible to some users.

Of course it will be visible only for some user groups. The problem is just to controll how the users get in this group(and maybe the differend groups do not see each other, and each others posts - but this would be "virtual forum hosting" AFAIK ).

Rafael Steil wrote:For now, you can remove all permissions from the "General" group, and then the Administrator can move the users to another group. This will solve your problem.

How to remove all the rights? in those rights "lists" there's no such item like "no rights".

Rafael Steil wrote: The only gotcha is that there is no feature on jforum that will list "users pending aproving".

If in the user overview, a column with the "group" would be shown, than one would know that all the users in group "General" are "pending for approval" in this "no rights" scenario, right?

Rafael Steil wrote:
As long it is possible to make it, it's unlike I can get it done until 2.1

When do you plan to realease 2.1 (or at lest the RC ) ?

Thank you very much,

Matt.
[originally posted on jforum.net by Anonymous]
 
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Of course it will be visible only for some user groups. The problem is just to controll how the users get in this group(and maybe the differend groups do not see each other, and each others posts - but this would be "virtual forum hosting" AFAIK ).



By default all users get into "General", as you may know. About seeing or not posts from users of other groups I don't have any opinion other than almost no one will need something like that. (Considering, of course, that roles are "allowed" to all. If users of some group are restricted to post only in forums where no other group has access, so this "feature" can be made by regular permissions).

How to remove all the rights? in those rights "lists" there's no such item like "no rights".



That's right. Where you read "Restricted Categories", "Restricted Forums", "Deny anonymous Posts" and etc, selecting the options in the list will deny access to the selected resources to the Group ou User being edited.

If in the user overview, a column with the "group" would be shown, than one would know that all the users in group "General" are "pending for approval" in this "no rights" scenario, right?


Yes, something like that. What I have in mind is to provide another link for that, like "Users by Group", or, when editing some group, give the possibility to show the related users.

When do you plan to realease 2.1 (or at lest the RC ) ?

Thank you very much,

Matt.



Until March, if no surprises show up.

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]
 
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Rafael Steil wrote:
By default all users get into "General", as you may know. About seeing or not posts from users of other groups I don't have any opinion other than almost no one will need something like that. (Considering, of course, that roles are "allowed" to all. If users of some group are restricted to post only in forums where no other group has access, so this "feature" can be made by regular permissions).


Now I know what's missing: when the user registrates, he should supply something like "cathegory or forum to apply for". Or the link from where the user is forwarded should contain this as a parameter. This should be also displayed as column the User list, so that the Admin knows how to give the rights.
With only these small changes one would have "Virtual Forum Hosting" - a feature that only a few Forums have . I think this would be a huge advantage over other forum implementations.

Would it be very complicated to implement it? I'm newbie to JForum and can't evaluate the required effort .

Rafael Steil wrote:

If in the user overview, a column with the "group" would be shown, than one would know that all the users in group "General" are "pending for approval" in this "no rights" scenario, right?


Yes, something like that. What I have in mind is to provide another link for that, like "Users by Group", or, when editing some group, give the possibility to show the related users.


I see. This would be cool, but one could still could use very easily the admin without it.

Rafael Steil wrote:
Until March, if no surprises show up.


Glad to hear that.

Thank you very much,

Matt.
[originally posted on jforum.net by Anonymous]
 
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Well... to do "virtual forums" right is not exactly simply, but is not that hard too. The main problems is to understand it right. Could you please list some forum software which has this functionalitiy you're referint to, so I can evaluate?

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]
 
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Rafael Steil wrote:Well... to do "virtual forums" right is not exactly simply, but is not that hard too.

One must not implement the Luxury variant from the begining .
The basic version would do it for most of the users, and for that, only two small features are missing :idea:

Rafael Steil wrote:
The main problems is to understand it right.

The basic idea for "virtual forums" is that different groups of people use the same forum installtion without knowing about each other(exept the administrator). If on needs for this as many installations as "virtual groups" than that would be no more "virtual hosting".
Simply said, each group gets it's own "category" and can act(view/edit/search/post) only on that .
If the two features enumerated by me in the previous post would be available than JForum would have something what's called "Virual forum hosting" by most of the people .
I can give you even more details if you wish.

Rafael Steil wrote:
Could you please list some forum software which has this functionalitiy you're referint to, so I can evaluate?
Rafael

I know only comercial(or customized) variants that build on top phpbb. This would be even a bigger argument if favor of JForum.
We used such a solution before, but after the "phpbb big security problem", our php forum was stoped. I would like to convince my php coleagues to swithch to java/JForum , but this won't hold by our php people if there's no "virtual hosting" .

Thank you very much,

Matt.
[originally posted on jforum.net by Anonymous]
 
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