MyBB Community Forums

Ok here is my issue. I am looking to create a forum that can only be viewed by certain members.

I Do not want to start creating different groupings for all my registered users. I was hoping that there was a way to create a hidden forum but give access to people by entering their names? Is that at all possible?

So it would only show up for say 6 people and they could chat privately in it? Is the only way to do this to make them a different user group?

add those members to a additional group AND allow that group members only to view and post in a forum thru forum permissions

Take a look at the 'Custom User Permissions' plugin.