Configuring Discourse for a closed or private community

:bookmark: This guide explains how to configure Discourse for a closed or private community, including setting login requirements, user approval processes, and invite-only access.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: Administrator

Discourse offers several options to create a closed or private community. This guide will walk you through the different settings you can use to control access to your Discourse site.

Setting up login requirements

To make your Discourse site completely private, requiring users to log in to see any content:

  1. Go to your site settings
  2. Find the “login required” setting and select it
    Login required setting

Implementing user approval

If you want to allow anyone to sign up but require staff approval before new accounts become active:

  1. Navigate to your site settings
  2. Locate the “must approve users” setting and select it
    Must approve users setting

Creating an invite-only community

To restrict new account creation to only those who have been invited:

  1. Access your site settings
  2. Find the “invite only” setting and select it
    Invite only setting

Setting up private categories

You can also make specific categories private:

  1. Visit the category page
  2. Click the edit button in the upper right corner to access category settings
  3. Go to the “Security” tab
  4. Adjust the permissions as needed
    Category security tab

In this example, only users with accounts can access the category. Anonymous users are restricted from viewing it.

You can further customize category access by making certain categories readable or writable only to specific groups of users. These groups can be either public or private.

Additional resources

Last edited by @hugh 2024-08-02T03:41:01Z

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