Simple plugin that makes what it promises.

I have installed groups to control bbPress user access to some forums based on groups.
It works OK. But it seems that it needs Groups bbPress in order to protect forum topics and responses too.

The problem is that this plugin seems to be outdated, it has not been updated for 3 years and it has not been tried in WP5.
The Groups bbPress plugin has no options or settings, I am not sure if it is working.

I like the modular aproach of these plugins that provide simple functionality that you can upgrade as needed.

I don’t like the way the plugin uses to assign capabilites to user groups. You need to provide capabilities one by one.

It would be great to be able to assign a role (and custom user roles like moderator in bbPress) to user groups which capabilities would then be aplied to all users in groups.

Thus you could convert a user in moderator only by adding him to the modForum group, provided you had previously assign modForum group the moderator role.

As it is now, you have to add the user the moderator role and add it to the modForum group too.
You may add modForum all capabilities under the moderator role too, but it is a complex and error prone task, and leads to problems if an upgrade in bbPress make changes in the moderator role.

It is an improvement needed by this great plugin. I did not give the 5 star due to this.