Non-admins Managing Hidden Group Members
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I currently have some group owners who would like to keep their groups hidden to non-members but still:
- Allow members of the group to view the group
- Manage members
Is there any way to enable either of the two above without giving these individuals access to the entire ACP?
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Is it not possible to do these things from the group page?
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Not that I'm aware of. If the group is marked hidden then neither a member nor an owner of that group can navigate to the group via
http://www.forum.com/groups/some-group. Perhaps I am using the wrong settings though. What I'd like is a group that- Doesn't appear in listings to non-members
- Appears to members and owners or a way for members and owners to navigate to the group management page
- Is invite only
Originally, I though private would do the trick. However, although private disables join requests, non-members can still see the group in the listings.
Does something like this exist?
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I think one way to achieve this is to have the group private but to not have the group hidden (i.e in the ACP: Manage>Groups>edit(for the group)>uncheck hidden).
Then in the ACP go to General>Navigation>then click on the group icon>disable (at the bottom)
That way the Group Icon disappears from the publicly accessible navigation pane.
If you are logged in and a member of the group you can access the group by clicking on your profile icon. Then click on your name (positioned above your online status). Then click on the circular menu icon (default is a blue circle with three vertical dots). Then click on groups. Done.
Probably a bit too roundabout .... but it is possible.
Cheers.
Edit:
One problem with my approach above is that anyone can still see all the groups if they manually navigate to https://yoursite.com/groups in their browser... -
@quokka that's an interesting take and I never thought about that. However, I think if the group appears in or is searchable by users that are not in the group, that'd be a no go for our users.
I also realize now that my above statement is inaccurate. If a member navigates directly to the URL of a hidden and private group then they are able to view it. As an intermediate measure, I've trained our moderators to pass these links around so that group members can still get to their group pages. And if the person navigating to the user is marked as a group owner, they are able to navigate to the group page.
The only issue that remains for my use case is a user finding hidden/private groups that they are in.
If I get some time, I'll look into the code to see if there's a way to populate these groups into user profiles as a list or visible in the group listings/search for members. And if that's of interest to the community here, I can share it back through PR to NodeBB or whatever is preferable.
