I apologize if this has been answered somewhere—I have tried to search everywhere I can think of.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to invite users to join a members-only board, and allow them to bypass the required user fields (other than password, I guess)?
I’m trying to create a new “sub-group” of membership, where sub-group members only have access to one particular category on the members-only board (trying to replace a mailing list). However, existing “full” members (or potential full members) should be able to join that sub-group—and members of the sub-group who meet criteria for “full” access can be elevated to full membership and see all categories.
Realistically, I’m guessing the answer is to create a second discourse instance just for the sub-group, but since many of the members of the sub-group will meet criteria for the full group, I was hoping they could avoid having to “join” two sites with two sets of credentials.
You’ll just have two groups, and use group permissions to control access to the categories. Full members can see the full categories. Sub members can see the sub categories. Full members who are also in the sub group can see the sub group’s categories. Right?
I’m not sure about skipping required fields. You can turn most of them off. Unless you want one group to fill in fields that the other doesn’t need to, there is no problem.
You’ll just have two groups, and use group permissions to control access to the categories. Full members can see the full categories. Sub members can see the sub categories. Full members who are also in the sub group can see the sub group’s categories. Right?
Correct.
I’m not sure about skipping required fields. You can turn most of them off. Unless you want one group to fill in fields that the other doesn’t need to, there is no problem.
Oh. Then the two instance solution or a plugin will be what you need. I’m not clear how the plugin would know whether a user needed to fill in the fields, though.
And if suggest using one site as the SSO master, but you’d still have the same problem.
You could have some external program be the SSO master. You could use the custom wizard to force people in a group fill in the fields you want, I think.
