The discussion revolves around the visibility of the invite button on a forum where user approval is required. Pad_Pors notes that the invite button is only visible to admins and moderators, not regular users, even when ‘must approve user’ is enabled. codinghorror confirms this is intentional to prevent bypassing approval. Pad_Pors seeks a way to allow trusted users to invite others while keeping the forum closed to strangers. fefrei suggests using ‘invite only’ mode, but Pad_Pors clarifies this was already in place. thomas_xr asks if both approval and invitations can coexist, with codinghorror suggesting future unification. tobiaseigen later clarifies that the behavior has changed, allowing regular members to invite others even with user approval required, without bypassing the process.
hi,
in our forum, there is no button for inviting users in user profile page or topic pages (even for TL2 users and above) .
this button is only visible to admins and moderators.
I couldn’t find any setting to tune this in admin panel.
in our forum the “must approve user” is active. is it the reason for invisibility of invite button?
Yes, if you have approvals on, users won’t be able to send invites, because they would bypass approval.
Thanks for the answer.
Is there any way to keep the forum somehow closed, meanwhile let trusted users to increase users?
I mean, I’d rather the growth in our forum happen based on the community who has been already formed. does anyone have any suggestion for it?
Does disabling approval, but enabling invite only suit your use case?
It was already the case 
then we needed another tool which enable strangers to ask for an invitation if they fit the community! and we switch to the current setting.
Is it possible to have the invite button even if newbie approval is active? I mean as a feature-request in the app.
as the invite button is only active for TL2 and more, and so it’s somehow like approval by trusted users of the community.
it seems that even inviting existing users to topics and messages is gone for other users.
and this make it little bit hard, is it possible to at least have the inviting function for existing users, in this case?
Hi there!
We’d very much like to have the invite feature for users even while having the validation of new users set to on. Knowing the existing user who referred the new user to the platform would be valued information for the validation process.
This is not possible at the moment, correct?
We can either have validation or invitation, but not both?
I believe that is correct, yes, but I could see us possibly unifying this in the approval pipeline.. I know @sam is planning some work on invite codes and maybe this could be bundled? 
This behavior has since changed. It is possible for regular members to invite others even when approval of new users is required, without bypassing the approval process.