Creating a ringfenced sub-community

Community Building

AI-generated summary

A user, nefibach, wants to create a ringfenced sub-community within their forum with specific permissions, including posting in a separate category, reading but not posting in other categories, and restricted private messaging. Falco confirmed most of these features are possible out of the box, except for restricting private messages. Falco and pfaffman suggested that implementing this feature would require significant development or setting up a separate forum. nefibach ultimately decided it might be best to keep the group out of the forum due to compliance issues, appreciating the time saved by the advice.

1

I’m not sure if this is possible but…

I am hoping to be able to create a ringfenced sub-community within my forum. This group of people should be able to:

  • Post in their own Category
  • Be able to read, but not post in other Categories
  • Not be able to either receive or send private messages (PMs should work as normal for everyone else)
  • Everyone else should not be able to see or access this group’s Category

I’d also need to be able to export the content for just that category, and not the rest of the forum.

Is that possible?

1 Like
2

Everything but the bit about personal messages is possible out of the box.

2 Likes
3

Is stopping members of a group sending/receiving PMs something that could be achieved with some developer input?

1 Like
4

Anything can be done with enough development budget. But at that point, I think it would be a lot easier to spin this “sub-community” into another Discourse instance.

2 Likes
5

If you disable access to user profiles and the people in the walled community can post only in categories that are accessible only by those people, then you might not worry about who can PM who, since they won’t know who else to PM.

But if you really want them to not to be able to see each other, setting up a separate forum is probably easier.

1 Like
6

Thanks everyone. It sounds like it’s probably best not to let this particular group of users into the forum in the first place, which is a shame but that’s compliance for you. At least you’ve saved me spending too much time trying to work out what’s possible for myself!

4 Likes