Can I have a public-facing forum where membership is behind a Patreon paywall?

Product Support

AI-generated summary

MisterMiyagi is seeking to create a public-facing forum where only Patreon patrons can comment. Falco confirms that this is possible using the Discourse platform with the discourse-patreon plugin. To set this up, Falco advises setting categories with specific permissions: allowing everyone to see content, and patrons to create, reply, and see content.

MisterMiyagi is pleased with this solution and thanks Falco for the additional suggestion to create a “banner post” or pinned-topic explaining why non-patrons cannot create or reply to posts. Falco provides an example of a well-implemented solution at https://community.thefantasyfootballers.com.

1

Hello! This is my first post, so please be kind if I’m asking stupid questions.

It’s my understanding one can set-up Discourse so that only Patreon users can post questions. That’s exactly what I want. However, I would also like the forum to be public-facing so that it’s still crawled by Google and readable to visitors.

So, is it possible for me to have a public-facing forum where only Patreon patrons can comment? Furthermore, if I wanted to turn off the option for visitors to post anonymously, is it possible to do this without hiding the entire forum? Or does the anonymous option have to be left on in order to allow “non-logged-in” bots to crawl it?

I sure hope my questions make sense…

Thanks for any help you can provide!

2

Yes, you can!

  1. Install Discourse and the discourse-patreon plugin.

  2. Set your categories like this:

    • everyone > See
    • patrons > Create / Reply / See

  3. Well, that’s all. :tada:

3

@Falco you just made my day. THANK YOU! I’m sold.

4

Also, you may want to add a “banner post” or pinned-topic that tell random people why they can’t create/reply so they don’t get confused.

Your Patreon colleagues at https://community.thefantasyfootballers.com did this very well!

5

Great advice, @Falco. Thank you. And thanks for the link!