Can you have private sections with SMF?

Discussion in 'SMF Discussions' started by tmgenterprises, Oct 28, 2012.

  1. tmgenterprises

    tmgenterprises Regular Member

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    I want to add a forum to a membership site I own but it will need to have private sections for what I have in mind. I would prefer to use a free forum software, at least for now. I don't envision this becoming a huge community since it won't be open to the public so I really don't feel I need to spend a lot setting one up.
     
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  2. benjaminp

    benjaminp Regular Member

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    Most (if not all) forum softwares allow you to have private areas.

    You can set user registration to require Admin Verification, which means you have total control of who signs up.

    If you want to allow anyone to signup and view some sections, you can just make the sections you need private and require them to be in a certain user group view that section.

    mybb, phpbb, smf are all able to manage that with no problems and are all available free.
     
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  3. benjaminp

    benjaminp Regular Member

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    Just realised you were asking specifically for SMF, but everything I've said still applies.

    When creating a new board untick guests in the allowed groups section. Here's a quick screenshot I just took for you:

    add board.png
    This now mean that unless you're logged in, you won't have access to the forum. Now to restrict who can signup, seen as it's a forum for a small membership site, I'd probably go with admin verification like I mentioned before.

    To do this from the admin panel, go to members, registration, then settings and then change the "method of registration employed for new members" to "admin approval". This gives you complete control of who can signup.

    user reg.png
     
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