Restricted forums for bbPress
Posted by Stephan onDisclaimer: I do not support this plugin.
After my recent adventures with phpBB I’ve decided to switch to bbPress. phpBB has served me well for a while, but there are two major downsides: you can’t use custom PHP inside your template, and to install plugins you have to edit a lot of the core files. The latter especially sucks, so I went looking around for a better piece of forum software.
bbPress
bbPress seemed like a good choice: small, easily customizable and a very usable admin panel. Unfortunately development has been rather slow lately and some basic functions you’d expect on a forum are still missing. Fortunately though, it’s so easily customizable and looks a lot like WordPress (which I have plenty experience with) that I was able to write some plugins of my own.
One of the most important missing pieces to me was the ability to hide a section of the forums from certain usergroups. As an admin, I want to have a place where I can discuss ongoing projects and other administrative activities with my fellow admins without everyone reading along. So I made a plugin that allows me to hide forums from usergroups I specifiy in the admin panel.
(if you don’t care about this story just jump to the download link)
What does it do?
After looking around in the bbPress plugin repository I found a plugin that basically does what I was looking for (Private Forums). Unfortunately, this one was broken (no wonder, last updated in 2007) so I just went ahead and re-wrote it. My plugin basically does the same:
- Adds a page to the admin panel in which you can change your settings
- Allows you to restrict forums to only registered users, moderators or admins
- Filters restricted forums and posts from the front page, search results, tags, rss feed and user history
- Throws an error if a user tries to manually visit a forum or thread that’s restricted to him
Installation
- Download restricted-forums-for-bbpress.zip
- Extract restricted-forums.php and upload it to your
/my-plugins/folder
- Go to “Plugins” in your admin panel and activate Restricted Forums
- Go to the “Restricted Forums” page and set which forums are restricted and who is allowed to see them
- Optionally, add a custom error message in the text box.
To do
The following functions have not been added yet, but I might add them in future versions:
- Add “Key masters” as a separate usergroup from Administrators
- Recursive restrictions (restricting a forum category automatically sets those rights to it’s child forums, except when specified otherwise)
- (…Request a feature)
Changelog
- 1.0.1: Fixed non-existing array on first use (March 25, 2011)
- 1.0.0: Initial version (March 6, 2011)
Dear Stephen, I am glad to see you have taken interest in bbPress. I have been running bbPress on my blog for over a year now. I like it for the same reasons you mention above but have also found there has been very little development going on in this direction. I just wanted to say thanks for the new plugin and I hope you have time to add more to the community.
TTB
Updated to 1.0.1, minor bugfix
How about adding a check box for “list forum on front page”?
Thank you very much for this plugin. It works great!
Thanks for fixing the plugin! It`s super frustrating that no ones developing for bbpress anymore since there isn`t other options with its features.
Hi,
I love this plugin, thanks so much for updating Private Forums. One issue that I’m having is that whenever I update something in the admin of my bbpress, the restricted forums options completely reset to their defaults and all the forums open up. Has anyone else had this issue or determined a fix for it? Thanks!!
Hi, this plugin is what I search for. I done step 1 and 2, but there is no “Restricted Forums” on my plugin list
I use WP 3.2.1 and bbPress 2.0. Do you have idea what should I do?
Any chance this could be updated to work with bbpress as a plugin inside of wordpress? I am using WordPress 3.2.1 with Buddypress and bbpress and would like to hide my forums from all but logged in users.
I was able to install this plugin inside of WordPress, but I don’t see anywhere to access the UI after that.
Hi, excellent plugin, just what I needed, however, I have the same problem as Chris below.
“I love this plugin, thanks so much for updating Private Forums. One issue that I’m having is that whenever I update something in the admin of my bbpress, the restricted forums options completely reset to their defaults and all the forums open up. Has anyone else had this issue or determined a fix for it? Thanks!!”
Hi!
Like Matt, I’d love to see the plugin running inside WordPress! Is there any workaround to get it working?
But first of all, you need to fix the download, it’s broken (Errror 500)… ;(
Thanks in advance!
Hey folks,
Sorry for never having replied to the comments here. I’m far too busy nowadays to keep this blog running, but I don’t want to shut it down because there’s some posts like these that still get a lot of people commenting and helping eachother out.
I’ll fix the download link, but I don’t use bbPress anymore myself so I won’t be fixing it for WordPress.. sorry! If anyone else does please do send me the updated code so that everyone that googles and finds this post can get it too.. of course I’ll totally credit you.
I’m interested in this plugin but it doesn’t work on my BBPress
I’m using the newest stand-alone version.
It would be great if you could add also possibility of hiding/showing forums/posts only for particular users or groups of users.
Actually, it works for me. How much would you charge for adding private post/private forums for specific people and groups of people?
Paul, I installed plug-in but like Mariusz, above, there is no way to find it after it has been activated. Does not appear in any menu. Any solution? I really need to use this plugin.
Same here. I installed the plug in but I could not find it anywhere. Please advice.
Thanks.