Hide categories from specific groups

[tophee (Christoph)]

This feature may be useful in other scenarios too, but my use case is a multi-lingual site. A key challenge of a multi-lingual forum is how to best configure it to allow the use of different languages while not spamming users with posts in languages they don’t understand.

At present, I think the best solution is to use language groups and show categories for each language only to members of the respective language group. Like this:

Best practice to managing a multi-language community?

Create groups for each supported language.
Create duplicates of each category for every language you want to support. And make them visible/writable only for members of the respective language.
Explain to your users that if they join any of these groups, they will be able to see the categories in the respective language.
Users can choose which languages they want to see (even multiple at the same time) by joining the respective language groups.
Enable “Allow user locale” in the settings to allow users choose the UI language they prefer (regardless of which groups they are in)

But there is a significant problem with this approach: all content (perhaps except for the default language) will be hidden from users that are not logged in.

So here is my suggestion for a feature: the problem would be solved with a category security setting “hide category from these groups”. That way all content would be visible to everyone but when you login, you only see your languages. (Positive side effect: people are encouraged to log in)

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

This sounds like something that might be doable in a plugin, especially because this doesn’t have to be watertight (because missing a spot where the category shows is just an annoyance, not a security problem).