Configuring group access, membership, and visibility

:bookmark: This guide explains how to set up and manage Discourse groups with different levels of access, membership requirements, and visibility settings.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: Administrator

Discourse groups can be configured to be closed, allow membership requests, or permit users to join freely. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up these different group types and managing their visibility.

Summary

  • Create and configure closed groups
  • Set up groups that allow membership requests
  • Configure groups for free joining
  • Manage group visibility and access settings
  • Allow users to leave groups
  • Update existing group settings

Creating a closed group

  1. Go to your site’s groups page (accessible from the hamburger Screenshot 2021-12-08 at 01.04.41 menu)
  2. Click the “New Group” button
  3. Fill in the group name (other fields between “Full Name” and “Effects” are optional)
  4. Scroll down to the “Access” and “Visibility” sections
    image
  5. In the Access section, leave all checkboxes unchecked
  6. In the Visibility section:
    • “Who can see this group?”: Default is “Everyone”
    • “Who can see this group’s members?”: Default is “Everyone”

With default settings, non-group members will see the group on your site’s groups page:

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Clicking the group’s link will take them to the group members list:

To restrict member list visibility:

  • Change “Who can see this group’s members?” to an option other than “Everyone” (e.g., “Group owners, members”)

To hide the group entirely:

  • Change “Who can see this group?” to an option other than “Everyone”

Setting up a group with membership requests

  1. Create a new group as described above
  2. Add at least one group owner in the “Add Owners” section
  3. In the Visibility section:
    • Set “Who can see this group?” to “Everyone” or “Logged on users”
    • Set “Who can see this group’s members?” as desired
  4. In the Access section:
    • Select “Allow users to send membership requests to group owners”
    • Optionally, add a template for membership requests.
      image

This configuration adds a “Request” button to the group’s listing and individual page:

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When a user clicks the button, a form opens allowing them to send a membership request:

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Group owners will receive the request with a link to accept or reject:

Creating a group that allows free joining

  1. Create a new group as described above
  2. In the Visibility section:
    • Set “Who can see this group?” to “Everyone” or “Logged on users”
    • Set “Who can see this group’s members?” as desired
      image
  3. In the Access section:
    • Select “Allow users to join the group freely”
      image

This adds a “Join” button to the group’s listing and individual page:

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Allowing users to leave a group

For any group configuration:

  1. Go to the group’s Access settings
  2. Select “Allow users to leave the group freely”

This adds a “Leave” button to the group’s page and listing:

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Updating existing groups

To modify settings for an existing group:

  1. Go to the group’s page
  2. Click the “Manage” tab
    image
  3. Edit Visibility settings via the “Interaction” link
  4. Edit Access settings via the “Membership” link
    image

To manage group ownership:

  1. Go to the group’s “Members” tab
  2. Use the admin wrench next to a user’s entry to grant/remove ownership or remove the user from the group

FAQs

Q: How do users navigate to the groups page?
A: Users can access the groups page by clicking the “Groups” entry in the main hamburger menu, as long as the enable group directory setting is enabled (default).

Q: Does group visibility allow non-members to see group content?
A: No, group visibility only determines whether users can see the group in the directory. Access to group content is controlled by category security settings.

Q: How can I show users a preview of restricted categories?
A: You can use the Category Previews theme component to give users a glimpse of restricted content without full access.

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-16T02:38:23Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-16T02:39:18Z

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13 Likes

Hi @simon , thank you for this! On the point of visibility, I understand how to set the permission for visibility, but what about navigation to the groups page? Is there anything built in to display to a user “My Groups” or “All Groups” so that users can navigate to these pages?

I have found that I can type in my community URL /g to get to groups, but obviously no user would figure this out on their own. I’m wondering if maybe there is some built in way or best practice to display groups to users.

As long as the enable group directory setting is not disabled (it is enabled by default), users can get to the site’s groups page by clicking the “Groups” entry from the main hamburger menu. That page will show users all groups that they are a member of, as long as the group has not been configured to only be visible to Group owners, or to only be visible Group owners and moderators.

Any groups that are visible and have been configured to allow users to freely join the group will have a “Join” button displayed for their entry. Any groups that allow users to send membership requests will have a “Request” button displayed in their entry on the groups page.

2 Likes

Gotcha, I didn’t even notice the button there but I see it now.

1 Like

Please clarify for me
If I allow everyone visibility to the group – does that just let them know the group is there OR can they also see all the content within? Is this setting the same as the security option for “see, reply, create”?

I’d like to tempt my users with some of the other sections that might require an upgrade of their membership to my forum by letting them know the category is there, but not let them see everything within.

TY!!!

With the setting of the group visibility you decide who is able to see the group on the groups overview. They cannot read messages send to a group they aren’t a member of.
Whether a category is visible to the user, depends on the caregory security settings. If the user is not member of a group with “see” permission they will not see the category or any topic in it.

I would do that with Category Previews

1 Like

Thank you, I’ll check that out.