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[Stephen]

There are better solutions for sensitive matters including:

• Login-only boards
• protected categories
• group private messages

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@codinghorror

I believe it is for ultimately negative reasons — people want to play the peek-a-boo content game, show people topic titles then demand they create an account if they wish to see more.

Still not a fan of this but it comes up a lot … community team is working on a lightweight theme type solution right @tshenry @hawk?

[HAWK]

That is correct. It goes hand in hand with discourse-subscription as an upsell.

[tshenry (Taylor)]

Below is a link to the component I was working on. The OP was more geared toward seeing a full topic list without being able to enter any of the topics. This one focuses on exposing the existence of a category without being able to enter it. It should still be useful from an “advertising” perspective and as Hawk mentioned, could pair nicely with a subscription model.

Category Previews

This component will allow you to add “category previews” to your categories page so users are able to see that a category exists without having access to the actual category. The preview looks like a standard category, but can link to a specified page where a user can be educated on how to gain access. I’ve included a simple example below, but there are many different ways this component can be configured. Please be sure to read all of the information included in the Theme Settings. Theme Cre…

[MichaelTunnell]

I think the ability to hide content for only logged in users would be useful these days especially if there was a [hide] BBCode. For example, I have an event that I am doing and I’d like to post the link to join the event on my forum, however I do not want to give the awful spammers and trolls access to the event and requiring the basic creating and logging into an account would deter 99% of those trash people.

So if I could have a link to the event join room hidden unless logged in, that would eliminate the vast majority of the garbage potential.

This is similar to MeetUp.com setting it up so that people have to RSVP in order to get the link for a Zoom event to avoid the spammers.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Can’t you just put that topic on a login required category?

[MichaelTunnell]

Not if I want to use the thread to promote the event as well. I would have to manually move it to a locked category when I want to share the link and have a separate thread/page for the promotion of the event. The simpler approach is to just have a section hidden behind a bbcode that way it makes it easy for people to get the information about the event without an additional unnecessary step.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

It would be easy enough to have a theme component hide the secret stuff (like the spoiler does), I think, but it would still be in the json load available to the browser. Having a different version of the post for some users and not others seems hard.

If having it hard, but not impossible to see is good enough then I think modifying the spoiler to show only to certain users should be not too hard.

[MichaelTunnell]

@pfaffman

If having it hard, but not impossible to see is good enough then I think modifying the spoiler to show only to certain users should be not too hard.

I think this would be good enough for most people, including my example. If I had this for an event I did recently it would have been a much nicer experience for me and the participants.

I dont think it necessarily needs to be locked for all because if they are going to go through the trouble of scanning the DOM then I’d like to talk to them to find out why they put in that effort rather than just making an account. lol

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

@MichaelTunnell

if they are going to go through the trouble of scanning the DOM then I’d like to talk to them to find out why they put in that effort rather than just making an account.

That’s what I thought, but everyone has different definitions of what is “safe enough”, and I usually don’t bother to think that any of them is wrong.

So what you want is a [hide-for-logged-out-users] bbtag that just makes whatever is in it hidden from anonymous users? And you’d just include something like “log in to see the link” as part of the topic (it’s not the plugin’s job to let them know?)

Here’s how the the spoiler theme component works. I guess you’d want it to show automatically for logged in users and to not un-blur if they were not logged in. Would that do it? It might be possible to just use the spoiler plugin and add CSS that did that, but I’m not really sure.

[MichaelTunnell]

Yes, logging in would display it and a guest couldnt see it. However, the bbcode for spoiler can be activated by guests, I wouldnt want them to be able to activate at all without being logged in so not unblurring as you said could work.

yea I think having to provide a message myself for how to get the link would be totally fine. bbcode doesnt need to do that.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

That sounds right. Not quite sure offhand just how to do that. If you’re interested in paying to get it done, you can contact me privately or ask in #marketplace with a budget (it usually makes more sense to craft a job to match a budget rather than propose some “ideal” solution that took more time merely to research than the entire budget for the project would have paid for).