Newbie Questions About Private Forums / Privacy

[David S]

Hi, being totally new to BBPress, trying to find out if there is a way to permit members to join after sending them a link somehow and block users from randomly joining through the WP back-end?

Is there a way to keep random people from signing up for the forum once it goes live? I’ve been searching documentation but so far can’t find anything on this. It seems Private forums only do not display content but still anyone can randomly sign up. How can I control who can join? Thanks.

[Robin W]

bbpress simply uses wordpress registration.

so to stop anyone being able to register, you need to uncheck

dashboard>settings>general>membership>anyone can register.

That stops the world joining your site.

The best way to control who can join is a manual system, so I use contact form 7 plugin to create a membership form, and then manually add users.

That way you control who joins and what they have access to.

[Robin W]

these may also help

https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-user-registration-plugins/

[David S]

Thanks for your response.

So just to understand what you’re saying, go to Settings, General, Membership, uncheck Anyone Can Register and then if I do that… how exactly can I let new members join the forum?

Do they email me through the contact form, request membership and then I can send them a link or add them manually as Subscribers to the WP back-end and then they should also be members and able to post to BBPress forums?

If I add them manually they still won’t be able to do anything on the forum, though, right, since joining will still be disabled…?

I have a course that’s already gaining some traction so would love to have a forum to go with the course that could be members only. I’m just not sure if I can achieve that or how to do it.

I just want to be able to understand what you’re describing so I can make it actionable…and the fewer the plugins the better for obvious reasons.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by David S.

[Jim]

Alternatively, leave “Anyone Can Register” checked, so anyone can become a user on your site. But don’t allow them backend access, so they can’t directly edit their profile (and add themselves to a group). Personally I do this with Profile Builder, so only admin has back-end access, and the same plugin allows you to build a profile-edit page where users can do other sorts of profile editing.