Thanks @denvergeeks, but this is not on a paid subscription plan - everything comes out of my own pocket (except when offset by ccasional small contributions from members).
So you are self-hosting?
Thanks @Nathank
Yes, have now installed that Custom Wizard plugin, though no success so far in getting it to do what I want.
The functions that seem most applicable are marked as being for subscribers only, I canāt rule out alternative approaches - but so far no elegant solutions that deal with the complexity involved in identifying people with the qualifying characteristics of a private forum member (as established via drop down / multi select custom field) while filtering out everyone else as public forum applicants
Perhaps I donāt even try - maybe I just manually attribute the group membership according to the applicant responses received., when approving sign ups. (An ugly sign up experience for the public though)
There is also
Yeah, you are right. Youād need a free community subscription to use those features (especially Add to group), which adds to the pfaff a bit. But still doable.
Thanks @nathank .
I have submitted an application for free community subscription - will see how that goes.
Must admit to being a bit nervous about becoming permanently dependant on a plugin that could change its āfreeā policy at any time. Is there an escape route if it does?
Sort of; if the subscription lapses for any reason, the Wizard will still work; just changes to that subscriber feature will be locked.
Looking back up this thread, it is odd that you couldnāt make the automation work. That sounds like a significant bug - and I can reproduce it.
With your use-case it might be better to advocate for that to be fixed, and view the Custom Wizard Plugin as a workaround.
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My use case is also similar. Iām creating a private (in my case paid) community, but I want to allow visitors to be able to create an account and see limited (teaser) content without paying. (No anonymous access, so Iāve set login required.)
When you get everything sorted, @Paul_King would you mind summing up the plugins you end up using, the set-up you end up using including automations and validations (etc), and any gotchas? Thank you in advance.
@nathank Am I understanding correctly that if I have a Visitors group and a (paid) Members group, I can simply restrict access to categories by changing the āeveryoneā security setting? (And being careful to check all sub-categories also, because security settings do not inherit? ā Something I learned yesterday, which was not intuitive and potentially dangerous! Subcategory does not inherit security settings) In particular, trust levels will not rise for Visitors such that they could ever give themselves more access, correct?
Also @nathank, what does this mean?
Do you mean that a Member could not cross-link (at all) from one Member category to another if itās (at all, i.e. Member) security restricted? Thatās a hefty price to pay!
Iām re-considering at this point whether itās worth it to try allowing for logged in Visitors, for the sake of getting leads.
@denvergeeks Since my community will be paid, maybe I could upgrade my hosting to get access to the Discourse Subscriptions plugin. I was planning to use ThriveCart since my courses (optional, external to the community) will be paid for through there anyway, and I can then bundle courses, coaching, community membership, etc. and keep all financial transactions in one place.
Yes, it is as simple as that.
You canāt grant access to a subcategory unless the group also has access to the parent category; this protects against the danger you highlight nicely.
It isnāt that bad - you can still link just fine, but the nice pretty Oneboxes wonāt generate.
Unfortunately, out of the box it only integrates with Stripe. Otherwise it would be ideal for you.
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Thanks @nathank I have posted this as a bug.
Meanwhile, part of my process will require that all existing users are automatically allocated a āprivate forumā group membership for the private forum (until now, I have not explicitly been using groups at all, and the forum has been private by default). I canāt see an obvious way to do this that doesnāt involve sending (redundant) invites to join, and a requirement for every existing forum user to respond, just to retain access.
I have a horrible sinking feeling that the only way to achieve this automatically is via some nasty Data Explorer query
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Yes, self-hosting on Digital Ocean
No need to sink!
If you have a list of your usernames or emails (e.g. from the Export via /admin/users), you can can simply copy and paste this into the 
bit of the Group page.
Easy peasy!
From memory, it struggles if you have over 1000 users. But you should be okay.
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Thanks @nathank
Looking at the dialog, as worded it does read a bit like that might just create invites for those users, rather than actually shifting them?
It is clever enough to add those with existing accounts, and send invites to those who donāt.
I know because I requested it! But yes, the copy could be better, eh?
Go and test it with a couple of test users.
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Thanks @nathank. It worked just as you said, and yes it is quite clever!
Happily recognized a windows clipboard copy of a cleaned up column of email addresses from Excel as comma delimited when I pasted into the dialog.
In my case I got āError 502ā quite a lot even with pasting in just 500 users at a time - seems like this is a server bottleneck issue (my hosting plan has limitations on network and cpu utilisation).
Reducing that to 200 users at a time pretty much consistently worked, though if I left it longer between batches, I could get away with a few more at a time.
My next step now to now somehow get some sort of two way synchronising link between custom user field variable for āPrivate Forumā to implement or prevent access to the group āPrivate forumā. Still no luck doing this via Discourse Automation.
Right now a test account signing up who ticks only the āpublic forumā box still gets full access to both.
My new custom user fields for Public and Private forum access also appear in user profiles, which might be a source of confusion, particularly since existing users have these fields unpopulated.
It might be better if the field was visible only to admins, or was grayed out for public forum only users
What would help a lot is for there to be a way for the forum administrator to directly nominate or override the accessible user group(s) and thus categories assigned to the user, while first approving the users - all from the same āApprove Userā dialog.
in fact the whole user profile should probably be editable from this dialog - to allow clean-up of identified user errors in custom user fields.
Currently the only way tidy up profile issues on sign up seems to involve a lot of jumping around to other areas in addition to approving the user - with significantly higher risk of error or omission on the part of the administrator as a result.
OK, an update
I finally got Discourse Automation to work - the trick was to use a drop down custom user field type (even though the instructions donāt spell this out) rather than the tick box field type I had started with. The drop down options need to correspond exactly to the full user group names
Very important - ensure this new field is not user-editable after sign up, otherwise a user signing up and being approved only for the public forum can later just unilaterally grant themselves themselves acess to the private forum.
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Hi @tgustilo
I seem to have gotten things working without recourse to any 3rd party plugins.
The built-in Automations plugin is the only one I am using, and a tip & a gotcha for this was posted just above in this thread.
I have (for now) given up on a conditional signup user dialog where the info a user is asked to provide differs depending on the forum they want to access. So no Discourse Authentication Validations or Custom Wizard Plugin
The result is not quite as elegant for public forum applicants, but to some extent there is probably utility in exposing most of the professional qualifications and working role etc custom user fields used for private forum applicants anyway, to capture any other professional qualifications and roles the applying member of the public holds, and displaying this on their public profile.
This info means anyone engaging with this person has a greater sense of what might be relevant to their level and area of expertise.
From here, I would really like a way for an administrator to be able to directly edit a user application before it is approved - all from the same approval dialog
That way someone attempting to apply for access to the private forum who clearly doesnāt belong (based on the other info provided), can at least be granted membership of the public forum user group without having to re-apply from scratch (wasting that effort), and any other obvious mistakes could be corrected in one hit (Perhaps with a color coded flag warning the user of their edited profile fields).
Right now addressing problems in submitted applicant user profiles (including the userās selected user group) requires either rejecting the userās application outright, with little if any detailed explanation, or undertaking a separate multi-step and error prone clean up process, with high risk of mistakes or omissions by the administrator.
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I would like to make an application process like this work for my case also, controlled solely through the Automation plugin, and ideally, as you say, be able to tweak an applicantās group membership, profile fields, and anything else during the approval process itself.
An application and approval workflow for admins would have multiple use cases, from processing public members (or trial members, or members with limited access to free content) to more complex onboarding for private or paid or committed members.
Iām also thinking it would be useful to filter for good beta testers and starting members, which is my current struggle. Iād like a wide sweep, open option for anyone interested, but I really need to filter who will become strong initial or core members with a lot of influence.
If someone is building a support community to accompany course or coaching offerings, an initial sign-up automation could also channel those people into an appropriate cohort or coaching/support group.
So there are a lot of uses for combining automated sign-up/application with flexible admin approval.
I agree that being able to configure a single, official, free plugin, without having to pay extra, is extremely helpful for startup communities that donāt have funding or (any/many) paid memberships.
Thanks for sharing your process. Very helpful.
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