[docvader]

OK DW, you da man. I had the parent forum as one of my older restricted forums, and the permissions setup was keeping people out. I trashed it, and created a new parent forum. I figured out a few things, which I'd like to share with you all, in case you're trying to do this. I think this works. DW no doubt will have more and better suggestions.

I made a link to the dorms.php in my navigation bar. That is the only entrance to the dorms. I think, for this to work, you have to make members try to enter via your http://www.site.com/forums/dorms.php link. If they try to access through threads on your forum index page, in some cases, they will be able to view what's going on.

I made a parent forum in vb, which you can call whatever you want. I made mine as follows:
act as a forum: no
forum is active: no
forum is open: no
index posts in search: no
no password


I found that if you make it active, ie, visible, people can access it via the forum index page, where they can see the forum. (I tried to make that link the forum/dorms.php link, but was unsuccessful in doing so; my ignorance as to how to do that properly I guess).

This way, it's not visible. People don't know it even exists, unless they enter through the navigation bar link. The nav bar link brings them to DW's dorms area, where the dorm figures out access. People can't bypass and enter the area, because the dorm php takes care of all access.

So far, so good.

Thanks
rich
x.russbo.com/index.php