# Help with locking down forum
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [September 17, 2025, 7:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916 "2025-09-17T07:00:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Isla](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Isla)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 7:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/1 "2025-09-17T07:00:57Z")
>
I need to lock down my space as a matter of urgency, so that nobody can view anything. How do I do this? Is this possible?
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 7:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/2 "2025-09-17T07:07:35Z")
You may have to go into more detail I suspect to describe exactly what you need.
To hide the forum from anonymous users check `login required` in site settings. However, note this will ruin SEO as search engines will have nothing to link to.
Beyond that start removing groups from read rights in Category Security settings which will individually hide Categories.
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### Author:  [@Isla](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Isla)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 8:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/3 "2025-09-17T08:12:11Z")
I’ll come back to this asap, thank you!
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 11:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/4 "2025-09-17T23:48:04Z")
You can log out all users and put the site in read only mode.
But you can also just do a
```
./launcher stop app
```
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2025, 7:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/5 "2025-09-18T07:59:57Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> You can log out all users
Probably worth adding how you can do that?
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### Author:  [@Lilly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Lilly)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2025, 8:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/6 "2025-09-18T08:26:09Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> log out all users
i believe it’s
```plaintext
./launcher enter app
rails r 'UserAuthToken.destroy_all'
```
You may want to consider posting a banner or global notice before running the command to inform your users.
---
### Author:  [@Lilly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Lilly)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2025, 8:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/7 "2025-09-18T08:36:35Z")
also this topic may help, depending on what your concerns are
> [@What to do if your Discourse is compromised](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-if-your-discourse-is-compromised/40129):
>
> We’ve recently had two reports of Discourse sites that were compromised, likely due to weak admin account passwords. So we’d like to document: what to do when compromise happens what we can do to better prevent this in the future The Database Please note that Discourse, for several years now, has the following protections in place around the site database: Full database backup download links will only be sent via valid email of a site administrator, so you can’t just log in (via shoulder …
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2025, 10:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/8 "2025-09-18T10:29:04Z")
> [@merefield](#):
>
> > [@pfaffman](#):
> >
> > You can log out all users
>
> Probably worth adding how you can do that?
Well, yeah, if I knew how! 🤣 Thanks, @Lilly!
---
### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 3:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/help-with-locking-down-forum/382916/9 "2025-10-06T15:00:00Z")
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