I want to add a special group to my forum.
The can only see the categories that the are member of.
Other categories (open for everyone) the can not see.
Is this possible ?
AI-generated summary
In a Support category discussion titled Show categories to everyone except a specific group, PatrickH seeks to hide certain categories from a specific group (e.g., VIP customers), while keeping them visible to all others â essentially wanting to exclude a group rather than restrict access. Mittineague clarifies that Discourse permissions are additive, not subtractive, meaning you canât deny access to a group while allowing everyone else â though you can restrict a category to specific groups. Cool_Cool suggests using private messages with group tags, but Mittineague notes this is more topic-level, not category-level. pfaffman suggests a separate forum for the restricted group, which PatrickH partially agrees with, explaining he wants two âforums within oneâ â one open, one restricted â where VIPs canât see basic content. pfaffman reiterates that category permissions can be assigned per group, but PatrickH struggles to implement this. Mittineague requests a diagram, which PatrickH provides, clarifying he wants categories visible by group, not trust level, and specifically wants VIPs excluded from public categories. Mittineague explains that higher groups always inherit access to lower categories, and while muting can hide categories, it doesnât block access. riking offers a workaround: set categories as public, restrict others to specific groups, and mute public categories for VIPs â though VIPs can still access them via links or search. D8vid links to a similar use case where exclusions are voluntary and non-hierarchical. In short: Discourse doesnât support excluding a group from public categories â only restricting access to specific ones â but muting and careful group permissions can approximate the desired behavior.
Category permissions are additive. i.e.
See
See and Reply
See and Reply and Create
A lot can be done by setting permissions based on group membership. But it sounds like you are looking for a way to have the permissions be subtractive instead?
In other words instead of
Category - group members only, others restricted
you want
Category - others allowed, group members only restricted
If so, I know of no way to do this.
I believe this is already possible. Just create a private message, and invite the group as a tag, you donât need to invite everyone individually.
Wouldnât that be similar to having a category restricted to a group except if would be more like a topic restricted to a group? If Iâm understanding, what @PatrickH is wanting is not an âallow groupâ but a âdisallow groupâ.
itâs similar to this: New category permission - "cannot see"/"exclude"
i would like that very much, that you exclude groups from categories (also the posts from these categories are not visible)
You should say more about your specific situation.
Categories that are visible to everyone are visible to everyone. You want to violate a tautology.
It sounds like what you really want is a separate forum for this other group.
partially true.
What i (or my members) want is to have a 'separate forum in the forum. Where the canât see the âbasic questionsâ
The best way to tell you this; I want two forums (A & B) where 1 group (G1) can login in 2 forums (A & B) and the other group (G2) must first have permission. This is the main majority of my forum, but van not have access to the complete forum.
Then youâll make the g1 have access to the categories and g2 not have access.
You can control access to categories by group, so just put people in whatever group(s) is appropriate.
ok, but g1 must see the categories that are displayed in the open part (g2 is the closed part)
Thatâs not a problem. You can assign/remove post/reply/read access to any category for any, and as many, groups as you like.
Sorry, I donât understand that.
I know that that is possible, but it seems that I can not make it work?
Can you sketch and post a rough venn diagram? I sometimes do better with visuals and maybe it could help others understand too.
@PatrickH my suggestion would be that you set up a discourse site and start configuring the groups and categories. I think the functionality will become clear to you as you set it up.
Thanks, I think I understand better now.
If I have a forum with categories that correspond to groups something like:
- low
- medium low
- medium
- medium high
- high
In the current scheme it is easily possible to restrict access to the higher categories from each of the lower groups until certain criteria is met. But higher groups always have access to lower categories.
What you are wanting is a way to not allow higher groups access to lower categories.
In other words, as a contrived example, if a lower group was âassociatesâ and a higher group was âdoctorateâ, the AS would be lost in PHD topics so should not have access, and the PHD would have no interest in AS topics.
AFAIK, the closest thing to this would be to Mute the AS category from the PHD group. However, the Mute feature is not about permissions, it could help reduce the ânoiseâ of the muted categories, but it would not prevent access to them.
Categories 123:
- everyone: full
Categories 456: 
- trust_level_2: full
- vip_b: full
- staff: full
Categories VIP:
- vip_b: full
- vip_a: full
- staff: full
vip_a Muted Categories: 123
With this setup, vip_a users are not prevented from seeing the 123 categories if they are linked to them or search them out, but they will not show up on the homepage. âEveryoneâ really does mean everyone - they could just log out, after all.
Linking to a reply with similar use case example, but where exclusions (via group memberships) would be voluntary (opt-in), desired, and non-hierarchical.