# One discourse instance for multiple purposes **URL:** \ **Category:** Support\ **Created:** [February 11, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/one-discourse-instance-for-multiple-purposes/179345 "2021-02-11T14:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![tpicouet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6bbea6/32.png) [@tpicouet](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tpicouet)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/one-discourse-instance-for-multiple-purposes/179345/1 "2021-02-11T14:51:12Z")
Hi, I am working for a research entity that provides collaboration tools to researchers or teams to help them working and to stimulate openscience. One of the tools is getting old so I am prospecting new solutions. It is a WordPress website with several _buddy_\* plugins so that it better looks like a collaboration plateform. One of the _buddy_\* plugins is **bbPress** which provides the ability to manage forums (but in the very old way you know…). In this configuration, members from teams can create public **or private** forum. I know Discourse as simple user for a while and I like how it works so I wonder if we could use this tool instead. I’ve seen in other topics there is a [WP Discourse](https://github.com/discourse/wp-discourse) plugin, but it requires a running instance elsewhere. I have also read we can deal with groups and private categories but as I don’t have any admin account, I can’t experiment this. ### My question Is it possible to easily manage public and private topics? In particular, is Discourse _designed_ for this purpose or would it be a trick? I would like to have members belonging to groups and only be able to see/create topics within their own group. Any feedback is welcome 🙂 PS: please forgive my poor english --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/one-discourse-instance-for-multiple-purposes/179345)._