Is there a way to "hide" a forum?

[Dennis Tsang]

Expanded on above:

Make a category, and make sure that in it's permissions "Can View?" is deselected for all groups (or those who you don't want to see it by default).

Then, add a child forum with whatever permissions you like.

The category can't be seen from the Index, but as Matt says, if you type in the URL then you can see the forums. I think you do it like that anyway...

Permissions are inherited for subforums, so it won't work as you've tried.

You can select if a forum is active or not, and if it's inactive, it won't show on the index, even to admins I believe.

If the forum's inactive, it is not accessible at all from the front-end.

Unfortunately this problem requires a code modification or plugin.