add private subcategories/subforums quickly

[Sculli]

As happy as I am with vBulletin, adding private forums and categories and setting permissions for those is such a pain that I dread every time I get a PM asking me to do it. There has to be a faster and more convinient way.

Here is what I would ultimately like to achieve:

Plugin/Extension to add a private usergroup, and create either a private forum, or a private category with multiple private forums for that usergroup, associate the two and set all necessary permissions (includeing usergroup leaders and forum mods) for all categories/forums created.

It seems to me like this would be a mod that would be used by many many vB users, it's like the most common thing to give people their private forum. I currently run 44 private forums on my board for game guilds/clans, and it takes like 30 seconds to just load the forum permission screen, adding a new forum is a nightmare.

Anyway here is the proposed layout for the two most common cases

private_categoryA
--private_forum_1
--private_forum_2
--private_forum_3

private_cateogryA can not be seen by regular users, only if a member is part of a usergroup for a private_forum they can see the category. If a member is part of the usergroup that has access to private_forum_1, then the member can not even see the existance of private_forum_2, and private_forum_3. Likewise, if the user is a member of the usergroups that grant access to forum_2 and forum_3 respectivly, then the user will be able to see forum_2 and forum_3, but not forum_1.

private_category_B
--private_forum_10
--private_forum_11
--private_forum_12

In this case the entire category would belong to one usergroup, permissions could be inherited. Only those who are in the usergroup will have access to the category_B.

At the same time it would be good to create a mod_usergroup for private_category_B. Mods would be able to mod only those forums, but none of the boards public forums.

All in all this would be a plugin/extension to facilitate the speedy creation of private forums and categories/sub-forums.

Thoughts?