hiding forums based on user age

[hinch]

I assumed this was a fairly common issue but appears I was wrong

I want to create an "after hours" forum section as part of my public forums however I want it to not show up for unregistered users or registered users below the age of 18.

Now my plan was to have an admin editable only custom field that is simply a 1 or a 0 for above or older that way I have to verify that they are over 18 instead of just taking their word for it (way to cover my ass legally )

What I can't seem to work out how todo is make a forum visible/invisible based off the value of a custom user profile field.

Is there any known way of doing this or perhaps a better way of doing this?

[phlogiston]

I think possibly a better solution would be to use a joinable usergroup.
Create an "over 18" usergroup that will add access to your "after hours" forum, if you set the usergroup to require approval before joining it will work out the same as you altering a custom profile field

Instructions on Public Usergroups from vb.com: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1437328

[hinch]

yeah I was hoping todo it avoiding usergroups because its a gaming community forum so most members are a member of either the standard public group or one of the clan groups. going through 2k members and adding them all into a 2nd group is a little painful for me and as far as i'm aware the public joinable groups become primary groups not secondary groups

[phlogiston]

Hrmm. I can see it may be confusing to have two seperate types of joinable group but to be honest, personally I'd still go with trying it via usergroups - vbulletin already deals with all the permissions for forum access by usergroup which is easier to use than hooking in with conditionals to use profile field based permissions (dealing with forumhome, forumdisplay, search results, forum jump menus, etc, etc)

Public Joinable groups are usually (I think) added as a secondary group, make sure when you create the usergroup to leave "Can override primary group title/markup" as unchecked, that way none of the settings or stuff from the group will show on profiles or postbits etc.

Also I may be misunderstanding - you say you'd have to verify them as over 18 for custom profile field method so I'm not certain how approving Join Requests would be more of a chore? :S

[hinch]

if public joinables do go as secondary usergroups then that is an option i could use i guess.

i possibly explained it badly for the approval thing. they way i was after setting it up was just an input box in usercp where they could paste a link to a scan of some form of ID proving their age. then i could have a non editable usergroup box and just change it to 1 (writing an external batch script to help me mass review) going through the public user groups i have to open each applicant contact them to send me a link via pm read a pm open the link and then approve I can't really automate it so it just adds a few extra steps into the process.

[phlogiston]

Yes indeed

I'd suggest making the terms of joining the group that they must paste the link to the ID scan in the join reason ipnut box but I'm not certain how successful that would be with people not reading instructions!

Maybe someone else has simpler ideas of using profile fields to figure forum permissions, it'd definitely be a nice addition. Similar to Promotions I'd guess, rather than basing the promotion on rep or posts, base it on entering the correct value for a custom profile field.

In fact, try a search here for "custom promotions" it may yield a solution

[cheat-master30]

Have you tried this modification:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...stricted+forum

I think it does what you want.

[COBRAws]

You should try this: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=136097

[hinch]

thanks for the links guys sorry its taken me so long to reply been busy.

I'll check them out see if i can get them working how i want them to