My latest Hairbrained project! (next strange request)

[darnoldy]

Folks-

Okay, so I know squat about PHP or SQL— I just know what I want to do. This may be as easy as it seems to me like it should be, or it may be impossible.

I have a single forum that is to be available to members of a paid-subscription user group. I don't want that forum to be listed in either the forum list on FORUMHOME or in the FORUMJUMP selection menu (even for people who have access). Instead, it is accessed through a link that is on every page (well, a lot of them)— if they are a member of the user group, it says "Club Forum" and takes them to that forum, if they can't, it says "Join our club" and takes them to the paid subscription page.

So, I managed all of that with template edits and settings. But... there's one more thing I'd like to do. If the user has access to the forum, and if the forum has new messages, I'd like to indicate this within the link.

The various forum_bit_x templates utilize a variable $forum[statusicon] that contains that value. So, I guess what I need is a way to evaluate that variable for a specific forum outside of the forum_bit_x templates. I guess I need a plugin...

Any ideas?