MyBB Community Forums

New member here... Firstly, I enjoy the mybb since even a complete non-programmer like me can install, run, and customize it.

I'm working on a forum for a client. The thing is, I only want certain people to be able to sign up for the forum. I can't seem to find a plug-in for this.

Since the forum would be linked from a website with traffic, people are going to find it regardless. This is an "Employees Only" forum for a business, so there can only be certain people viewing it.

I've thought of 3 different ways to go about this, but don't know how to do any of them...

-Make forum invite only - Probably the best solution, but I don't know of a solution to make this happen.

-Users can only register if the Referrer matches a certain phrase or something - Another good solution, but don't know to do it.

-Link to the forum from another page, but it would be password protected. This is not an ideal solution, since there would be 2 sets of names and passwords people would have to remember.

If anyone can help me with this, it would be most appreciated. If there are no plug-ins that exist, I would be willing to pay to have one written for me.

Thanks!

This should be doable easily enough, and there are several (already built-in) ways to approach it.

For instance, let's assume that only employees can become "registered" members of the board, and to do so they have to go through the email-based activation with the board administrator - presumably yourself or your client. So, all registered users = employees. If that's the case, just create your new forum (called "Employees Only" or whatever) in your Admin CP, under the "Add New Forum" or "Manage Forums" (I prefer the manage forums view since it shows all forums and how they are grouped), and set the permissions of the forum to only allow Registered users to view, edit, change, blah, blah, blah. Make sure you mark Unregistered (guest) users as not being able to do any of those things - including view. (Copy the settings of "Banned" users, uncheck everything.) To set these permissions, click the "Permissions" button of the "Employees Only" forum on the Manage Forums page once you have created your new forum is created. If you do this correctly, you should be able to log out of the board (making yourself a guest user) and not see the forum at all.

That's the easiest way I know of.

If you are going to have registered users that are not necessarily employees, post here and someone (perhaps myself) can walk you through creating a new user group for your employees and giving only those folks access to that forum.

Ichi

By Forum I meant the entire thing. I am familiar with permissions and have turned them off for anyone not logged in.

The issue is with people registering. I only want people who a.) Have been given the current referrer code b.) or Invited c.) Or any other workaround to this.

Essentially the only people I(my client) wants on this forum are employees. Employees would be told in person or e-mail on what special something they need to be able to register.

Ahh... sorry I misunderstood. That's a notch above me at the moment, so I'll defer to someone else.

Why not use as a registration method, "Administrator Activation" and have the forum not viewable to anyone except those that are registered (employees)?
Either that, or "pre-build" the employee user accounts and then close the board to new registrations?
Rob

Ichibod Wrote:Ahh... sorry I misunderstood.  That's a notch above me at the moment, so I'll defer to someone else.