Plugin / Private groups

Installation

To install this plugin :

1. Go to Dashboard>plugins>add new
2. Search for ‘private groups’
3. Click install
4. and then activate
5. go into settings and set up as required.

Settings

Go to Dashboard>settings>Private Groups

There are 4 settings tabs and 2 management tags.

Forum Visibility tab.

This tab allows you to set forum visibility.

By default where the forum has groups set, then these are only visible to authorised users. However you may want users to see that forums exist (to attract new forum users), but not to see content.

For instance on a cookery site you might have a cake group, who exchange recipes and advice on cakes. You might want people to sign up before being able to contribute, but if they don’t know the forum exists, they won’t join.

So by listing the forums (and optionally the description – see tab below) users can see they exist, and if they click the forum or freshness links, they can be taken to any url or wordpress page you wish. Typically this might be a sign-up page, or a ‘you can’t access’ page. For instance you page might say

Sorry, you need to be a member to see this area. To join click here Login if need-be [bbp-login]

In this tab, you can set whether non-group members can see the forums in the indexes (but not access). If the forum is set to public, then both non-logged in and logged in users will see this. If the forum is set to private, then only logged in users will see the existence of these forums. this gives a highly granular approach to what forums are displayed for different groups.

If visibility is set, then there are options for redirecting, and what freshness messages are displayed.

General Settings

In general settings, you have the ability to hide topic and reply counts, show sub-forum descriptions, and remove the ‘private’ prefix from the forum displays.

Group Name Settings

Here you set ‘friendly’ names for the groups, to help you remember. These names do not affect how the restrictions work, group 1 will remain group 1 whatever you name it.

To set forums

For each restricted forum

1. Go in to Dashboard>forums and select the forum you wish to restrict.
2. Under the text you’ll see a box called ‘Forum Groups’ – select the group or groups you wish to allow to access this forum
3. If you wish to have a custom error message, you can set one here.

Setting Widgets

The bbPress topics and replies widgets will still at this stage show all topic and reply titles etc. If a topic/reply is selected this will give an error message, but titles and authors will be visible, which might be embarrassing !

So you will probably not want people to see these subjects, so there are 3 new widgets that the plugin has added that filter this to only show appropriate content.

Go in to Dashboard>appearance>widgets

1. You will see three new widgets starting with (private groups) and covering topics, replies and Topics lists.
2. If you are using the standard bbPress topic, reply or forum list widgets, you should remove these from your sidebar and replace them with the (private groups) ones

Management Information
This tab lists the groups, what forums are allocated to them, and the number of users each group has

User Management
This tab allows for the bulk change of users between (and to and from) the groups, and via user edit allows multiple group allocation

Assign groups to roles
This tab allow those of you who use membership plugins etc. to assign a group against a wordpress or custom role.

To set forums

For each restricted forum
1.Go in to Dashboard>forums and select the forum you wish to restrict.
2.Under the text you’ll see a box called ‘Forum Groups’ – select the group or groups you wish to allow to access this forum

Setting Widgets

The bbPress topics and replies widgets will still at this stage show all topic and reply titles etc. If a topic/reply is selected this will give an error message (see below).

However you will probably not want people to see these subjects, so there are two widgets that the plugins have added that filter this to only show appropriate content.

Go in to Dashboard>appearance>widgets
1.You will see three new widgets starting with ‘(Private Groups)’ and covering topics, replies and forum list.
2.If you are using the standard bbPress topic, reply or forum list widgets, you should remove these from your sidebar and replace them with the ‘private group’ ones.

Shortcode

A shortcode to list users either across all groups or per group

[list-pg-users ] lists all groups and their users

[list-pg-users group=$group] lists users of a single group name eg [list-pg-users group=’developers’]