Private forum joining after x number of posts
 

I'd like to set up a private forum that you can only join after being an active member of the site. I have set up the usergroup and the private forum, but it is open to everyone to join. What settings do I need to change to only allow someone to join after they have posted 25 posts?

Set it so users automatically get moved to a usergroup when they reach x posts. Then change that forums permissions. It's quite easy :)

<font color="darkgreen">Create a new usergroup that will have access to this forum. Then create a promotion so that when x number of posts are reached it promotes them to the desired usergroup that has the permission to view/access the forum.</font>

I don't want EVERYONE to see the group, just be able to register for it. It's a private group discussing a sensitive personal topic that allows new members, but we've had some issues with members of another group registering for our site just to "spy" and repost. (Our group was greated to avoid the drama at another group). So, what I'd like to do is limit registration for this support group topic until the new member has become an active member of our community.

The closest thing would be a Promotion, which would put them into a primary or secondary group. I don't think by default there is a way to control visibility of groups by post. Might take custom coding.

I can't think anything for not seeing a forum before x posts but what I can recommend is, coding a plugin to check how many posts the user has and if he has less than x and the forum is the private forum, print no permission. By that, user can see the forum, but cannot post. But instead of using that, I also suggest make a promotion and add a new usergroup.

<font color="darkgreen">That is for the most part what a Promotion would be used for.

You can also protect a single forum with a apssword if you are using one of the lastest vB versions.</font>