Configuring Discourse for a closed or private community

[Discourse]

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

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
   

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
   

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
   

Setting up private categories

You can also make specific categories private:

1. Visit the category page
2. Click the Advanced settings toggle switch in the upper right corner
3. Go to the “Security” tab
4. Adjust the permissions as needed
   
   

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

• Configuring and managing the sign-up flow with user approval

Last edited by @yigit 2026-05-05T11:02:25Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[Moin]

@Discourse

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

This is wrong. In the example screenshot, “everyone” can see the category. The prior image used the trust_level_0 group.

Also, it might not be ideal to have a screenshot in the documentation where the checkmarks for the permissions are not shown below their headings.
Taking the screenshot without the “Modernize Foundation theme” upcoming change would work (or waiting for a fix).

I also wonder why the guide doesn’t mention the new visibility option in the “General” tab of category creation or the fact that you need to enable the advanced settings to be able to see the “Security” tab.

[dowlass (user618)]

@Discourse

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
   

How do trusted users or staff invite new users? Do they walk up to their friends and say ‘hey, why don’t you join our discourse forum!’ If so, how is the invitee to go about it?
Or are new users invited by email with a signup link? Are the invitation emails sent out from within Discourse? If so, how is that done?

I’m just curious to know the method or process of ‘explicit invitation’.

[Moin]

It means that there is no “sign up” option available when looking at your forum. Users need an invite link to sign up.

You can send that via email but also share the link elsewhere.

You can also invite users to this forum. You can find the link in the more menu of the sidebar, in your profile and the avatar menu.

The invite modal for admins offers a few more options, but the one here might work as an impression. Otherwise, just sign up for a free forum and start testing.