I understand that currently, only moderators, admins, or users with the Leader (TL4) trust level can reopen closed topics. For my forum, I would like to allow the original topic starter to reopen their topics after they’ve been closed.
I already checked the documentation and some feature request topics, but as far as I can tell, this feature isn’t available by default. Is there any possible workaround, perhaps with plugins, permissions tweaks that would make this possible? Alternatively, are there existing third-party solutions or recommended approaches for this use case?
You’re right that there isn’t such a feature in core. A workaround is to flag the topic to let the staff know, but that may take a while if the staff aren’t online all the time. Another workaround is to use Category Moderators.
A plugin will likely be able to do the trick here. [1]
After digging around a bit, I found this plugin that might suit your needs:
The Topic OP Moderation Plugin looks like a pretty full solution, and it’s hard to guess whether that last reported error will happen to anyone else. If you try it out, please share your experience in that topic.
(EDIT: irrelevant references)
(I misread OP and went on this tangent…)
If the plugin doesn’t work out, there are several old feature requests still open for this. As of this writing, none have any votes – probably because topic voting was only enabled in May 2024 – but you could be the first:
Funnily enough, almost all (if not all) of those requests are pertaining to the ability of closing, not reopening. This seems like one of the first about reopening.
I would also find it useful if the topic starter could edit their own first post even if the topic is locked. I really would prefer to not have to use a plugin for the functionality.
I got trigger-happy and related this question to my notes on users closing topics. Amending my reply.