[Sculli]

Alright, so I have vB installed for about a week now, and I have spent quite some time in the AdminCP going through group and forum permissions, and I still don't quite get it.

http://www.qcdn.org is my forum for those who would like to take a look.

Registered users only see the public forums.
Then there is a private category, which has some 40 private forums. Each private forum can only be accessed by a specific user group.

I have several questions and remarks:

Why is private_usergroup_01 even listed in the permission table for the public forums if it's only purpose is to give access to private_forum_01 within private_category?

How can I create a private_usergroup_XX that will have access to private_forum_XX only, without that I have to go in and edit the forum permissions of all forums, public and private, for that private_usergroup_XX?

I came from phpbb2, where group and forum permissions were straight forward. I am not sure what my problem in vB is, but I do hard a hard time to wrap my mind around just how exactly group and forum permissions work.

For instance, unless I give all private_usergroups view/edit/post permissions to my private_forum_category, they can not post to their private_forums. If I do give them view/edit/post access to the private_forum_category, they get view/edit/post access to ALL private_forums within that category, UNLESS I got in and revoke that access for those private_usergroups they are not supposed to have access to. This is ridiculus. I mean I shouldn't have to edit 40+ forum permissions just to add a new one. Clearly I am missing something.

If anyone could be kind enough to explain in detail just how this works. I can do Y!, AIM, ICQ, IRC chat as well if someone has the time to walk me through it.

Alternativly you can sign up on my forum, then PM me, and I can put you into a usergroup that can see all private forums (not read them, just see that they exist). That may make things a bit easier.

Is there some sort of plug-in or extension that makes forum and usergroup permission assignment easier?

Thanks in advance. I hope this whole thing is not supposed to be as complicated as it is, and that I am just missing the obvious.