literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

(I just posted this at the support forum for myfreeforum.org

http://forum.myfreeforum.org/

in order to help a new Admin with a question regarding membership and privacy)

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I shall be happy to attempt to help you in any way.

First, may I suggest to everyone that they visit

http://www.phpbb.com/support/tutorials/

and work through the splendid "movie" tutorials which walk you step-by-step through the entire process of installing phpBB at your site (which you do not have to do if you are using a form at myfreeforum.org) ... all the way through each and every phase of forum administration available.

I shall post this NOW, in case you are anxiously waiting for an answer, and then I shall return and try to explain how I, as a beginner, have attempted to configure the privacy of my message board.

Start off by viewing this tutorial on creating private forums

http://www.phpbb.com/support/tuto...hp?t=phpbb2_admin_forumpermission

Next, watch this tutorial on creating Groups

http://www.phpbb.com/support/tuto.../display.php?t=phpbb2_admin_group

Now that you have gone through these tutorials, I shall attempt to explain some of my own experiences in configuring my first message board.

Of course, as Admin, you are free to go member by member, and tailor what the can or cannot see, and what they may or may not do.

There are circumstances when such individualized tailoring of membership may be ideal.

But, if you anticipate many guests registering, then in a very short time, the shear number of members will make it too labor intensive for you to customize individually. Here is where Groups come in. Think of a group as a member. I made one group called Sheep and another called Goats, (based on a Bible story where the Sheep are nice and the Goats are not so nice.)

When a guest visits my forum, what they see is a SHOWCASE of Announcements, which are a sample of what is available to registered members (once I as admin add them to the hidden group called Sheep).

So, when they join and log in, they still do not see the hidden forums, until I log in as admin, notice their new membership, and add them to the Sheep group.

Now, I am experimenting with the notion of creating a ban-less forum. If you are naughty, you are never baned. You are simply switched from the Sheep group to the Goats group. Goats still get to see certain forums and post, but only in the section I have created entitled SPAM. And those forums are set to automatically prune all posts which have no activity in 7 days.

Here is one drawback I have discovered, from my own personal perspective.

If a registered member goes to the USERGROUP section, they will see the SHEEP group, and they have the ability to leave from that group. I have a big warnining that if they leave, it is like baning themselve. They are free to rejoin, but it will not take effect until the Group moderator approves.

So, for my purposes, I would prefer a hidden group which is truly hidden, in the sense that even members never see it.

Also, I would like to have auto-approving groups that are open to members. My thought is that such an auto-approving group would allow members at will to control what they see on the main forum index.

Suppose a message board has 1000 forums. It would be awkward for them all to appear to every user. It would be desireable if there were usergroups that a member could join and exit at will, without mod approval on joining. In that way, a member could "join" the baseball group let us say (I am just using sports as an example, my forum is not about sports). So, whenever they join the baseball group, suddenly, 50 forums appear in their forum index, that represent 50 teams, let us say. But once they have finished with Baseball, they may like to remove themselves from the Baseball group and join the Football group, which would open up another 50 forums on their Forum Index page. I think you get the general idea.

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