Configuring anonymous posting for specific categories

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to create a group for anonymous users and configure category-specific permissions for anonymous posting.

Required user level: Administrator

Before proceeding with this guide, ensure that you have enabled anonymous mode on your site.

Creating a group for anonymous users

When anonymous posting is enabled, new anonymous users are created with a fake email address. The email domain for these users is formed by prepending anon to your site’s domain. For example, if your Discourse site’s domain is discourse.example.com, anonymous users will have email addresses with the domain anon.discourse.example.com.

To view the email domain for anonymous users on your site, check the admin page of any anonymous user and click the “Primary Email” button.

To automatically assign anonymous users to a specific group:

1. Create a new group for anonymous users, or use an existing group.
2. Navigate to the group’s Manage → Membership page.
3. Add your site’s anonymous user email domain to the “Automatic” domains list.

After completing these steps, all anonymous users on your site will be automatically added to this group.

Configuring anonymous posting for specific categories

Now that anonymous users are associated with a group, you can allow or restrict their ability to reply to or create topics in specific categories. This is done through the Security page of each category.

Example: Allowing anonymous posting

To allow only anonymous users to see, reply, and create topics in a category:

Example: Restricting anonymous posting

To allow trust_level_3 and trust_level_4 users to post in a category, but not anonymous users:

For more examples of using the Security tab to control category visibility and user permissions, see Understanding groups and category permissions.

Additional notes

• By default, anonymous posting is allowed in all categories.
• Depending on your desired site structure, you may need to adjust the Security settings for all categories to explicitly allow or restrict access for your anonymous group.
• This feature is specifically for users using the “anonymous posting” feature, not for unregistered visitors to your site.

Last edited by @hugh 2024-08-02T05:14:39Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-02T05:14:45Z

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[RBoy]

Does this work for truly anonymous users? i.e. users who just landed in the website but don’t log in, they don’t have an account setup.

[JammyDodger]

No, I’m afraid this is for the anonymous users created as part of the allow anonymous posting feature. You still need an account to be able to post.