Need solution ideas for manual control of access to individual forums

[brightisland]

I am working on a website for a client and it's nearly done with the exception of sorting out an issue with subscription-based forums.

I had thought using something like s2member and BBPress would work, but s2member only handles tiered memberships. It doesn't allow you to manually assign individual users to individual forums.

Is anyone aware of any plugins or solutions that could accomplish this? I don't care if they're paid or free solutions, I just need to find something that will allow my client to restrict access by forum to the individual members she permits.

(To clarify, this is for an online teaching community, so she's wanting to restrict access to individual forums based on the class someone is enrolled in.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Ren Ventura]

The best way to go is by registering custom user roles/capabilities for each class and restricting the individual forums to your custom roles/capabilities. When a user registers for a particular class, they are granted the custom capability to access content restricted to that capability.

It's been a long time since I last worked with s2member so I don't remember much about it. However, I do recall it having a feature for creating different capabilities. For comparison's sake, you should also take a look at Restrict Content Pro. RCP is another membership plugin that is highly regarded. The developer, Pippin Williamson, is awesome and he's worked a lot with bbPress so there is a bbPress integration.

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Web & Software Developer & Blogger | RenVentura.com | Follow Me on Twitter @CLE_Ren

[brightisland]

Thanks for the response, Ren.

As it turns out, I ended up finding another solution — a plugin called bbP private groups by Robin Wilson. It allows for groups to be created and then for a private forum to be assigned to a group. Then you can put members in the groups and they will have access to the specific forum.

It looks like it will work for now, but I will look into Restrict Content Pro, as it might be a better option in the long run.

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