Subcategory access for Users, not Groups?

Support

AI-generated summary

ludwikc is seeking a way to create a category for coaching clients with private subcategories for each client. They want to know if it’s possible to grant access to each subcategory to the respective client without creating a separate group for each.

Falco confirmed that creating a group for each client is the only way to achieve this, as groups are the cornerstone of category security in Discourse.

However, pfaffman suggested an alternative by using private messages (PMs) and organizing them with tags if needed.

Additionally, Heliosurge recommended exploring the Private Topics plugin, which could be a suitable solution for self-hosted instances where each client is an individual.

1

I have quite an unusual setup.

On my private forum I need to create a space for my coaching clients.
Ideally I’d like to create a Category “Coaching Clients” with Subcategories “Client A”, “Client B”, and so on.

In order to achieve it, I believe I’d need to configure
“Coaching Clients” category in the following way:

  1. Who can see members of this category? No one.
  2. Display sub-categories: None.

But then, for the per-client Subcategories: can I give access to the private Subcategory to the CLIENT or do I need to

  1. create a separate group
  2. set it in a way that this group will be invisible to anyone else
  3. add a single user to this group

Is this the only way to achieve this?

2

Yes.

Groups are the cornerstone of category security in Discourse.

3

If you don’t want to create a group for each client then you can instead use pms.

Your can use tags to organize them, if they would help for some reason.

4

If each “CLIENT” is a single individual & you’re self hosted. Private Topics plugin might work.