Milly_Brown seeks to temporarily hide their forum due to spam and lack of active moderation, while preserving existing data and avoiding service cancellation. itsbhanusharma suggests several mitigation strategies: disabling new registrations, making the forum read-only, requiring approval for new posts and sign-ups, or making the forum private. Milly_Brown asks for clarification on making the forum private, to which itsbhanusharma replies with specific admin settings under Settings > Login, including enabling options for requiring approval and restricting access. Additionally, simon advises that if the forum is hosted by Discourse, contacting Discourse support via the admin dashboard is the best route for direct assistance. The discussion centers on practical, temporary measures to control spam and restrict access without losing data or canceling service, with a focus on configuration options available in the admin panel and potential support from Discourse’s team.
We want to hide our forum (we’re seeing a high level of spam/misuse and aren’t currently actively moderating) until we can determine our moderation plan.
How do we do this without cancelling the service and retaining the data/questions that have been asked so far?
Thanks!
While there is no literal way to hide a forum, here are a few advices that might help you better control the spam until you have a strategy in place:
You can use any combination of the above options to temporarily avoid spam as your case may be.
Thanks for the response.
I’ve been searching through the docs and can’t find one that describes how to make the forum private (point 5).
What’s the best way to do this?
If your site is hosted by Discourse (https://discourse.org/), you could get in touch with the Discourse team using the support address that’s found on your site’s admin dashboard. They’ll be able to help you out.
