Hidden Forums?

Some of my members asked for an elite private forum recently, and I'm thinking I'll probably give it to them and hope for the best. I explained my concerns about elitism, advertising, and having the best stuff locked away though, so hopefully they'll take my perspective as the forum owner into account.

 

Depends on the site.

I know person who runs a Business Coaching forum. If you want one-on-one advice than you pay her a minimum of $100/month and she creates a custom forum just for you. If you want the free information, then you can get that by registering.

Another runs a site on raising Camelids (llamas and alpacas being most common). She also has free basic information but to get the really good information, you have to purchase a monthly subscription. This gives you access to private training courses and other information. Last time I talked with her, she had over 600 subscribers paying a couple of hundred a month each.

Some sites have private forums for specific issues because people are more likely to talk about certain things away from the prying eyes of Google. This is common on Women's Issue forums where people are more likely to talk with others going through the same thing.

If your site is just a general discussion topic site, then you probably have less of a reason to have private forums open to the general userbase.

 

Thanks Wayne.

I've actually seen some of my rather large competitors with private member only forums that also have a general section. I'm just to cheap to join in order to find out whats going on.

 

I've done several like this. One is for only "me" to keep the number of PMs low because up until the 3.8 vB software it was hard to find previous PMs.

Our forum is dedicated to a particular brand of widget (***) and there are sponsors of my site that each sell those widgets to the public and have sponsor forums. A forum set up like that as a subforum of their sponsor forum gives people a place to ask embarrassing questions like "where is my widget I ordered 3 weeks ago!" and "my widget broke!" type posts.

And one is set up for 'feedback' to the widget manufacturer who visits my forums. I've even suggested vB.com might benefit from having such a forum to cut down some of the 'chatter' by the more vocal members regarding recent issues on vB.


*** widget: feel free to substitute basket ball, vehicle, power tools, airplane, etc
for the term 'widget'.

 

I want to set something like this up but dont know what settings etc to change it all to - I am new to vbulletin it's not funny

 

Can view forum - yes
Can view thread content - yes
Can view others' threads - no

 

On our forum we have the staff room which is hidden to everyone other than staff, then we have an 18+ section (not as exciting as it sounds) where members can rant, swear.let off steam, and post more " adult " themed things ( still no nudity ect though) to acess this section they have to be over 18 (obviously) and have a certain amount of posts

 

Gonna bump this :3





I was playing around with my forums earlier so they changed around slighty. I could not think of a better way to describe the forums but hey! A picture says a thousand words right?

The only forum blocked off is a "Top Secret" forum for select people only. So secret none of the staff apart from me can access it :devil:

Plus I see no harm in letting everyone see what goes on behind the boards. It's not as if the picture shows you anything useful

 

Well, I had a nice post all typed up, then something happened and now its all gone.

So anyways, here is a picture of what I mean. I split up my staff between Mods(6), Head Mod(1), Admins(1), Root Admin(1). All staff can see Moderation Station, but only the Head Mod, Admins and RA can see Admin Corner.

All of these are hidden to normal members.

 

I don't have any real 'elite member' forums for any reason, but I do have a few hidden boards, which I can describe as such:

1. Moderator boards, including standard, reports, infractions and trash can for deleted posts. These are just for staff, although in the past screwed up user permissions have allowed members to see them (yes, I had that bad luck before even vBulletin.com...)

2. Social Lounge and Community Town Square, which is merely a member's only social board. Why? I don't know, I just added it when the forum was new for the heck of it.

3. Board Archive and Secret Boards. These are viewable by members, guests, etc but are secret as in not linked from anywhere. One was given as a prize for a contest, the rest are just old boards which got conquered by bored members and ended up as general discussion forums. It's basically like the board hunting fad on Gamefaqs, which is a sub culture that finds dead boards and uses them for social boards or topics not notable enough to get a forum for themselves.

4. Article submissions. Submitted articles, members only to stop Google and Yahoo indexing them early (before added to any websites, or submitted anywhere) and penalising the target site for duplicate content. One is actually linked to off of vBulletin.org (it's the originally found link for the moderator article over there I wrote).

Nothing for donators or anything though.

 

I have two hidden forums. One is a "mod" section, for moderator discussion, another an admin section, which is usualy my testing and preview area.

Nothing usually goes on in either forum, but they're there for discussion

 

"Secret" and/or hidden forums for a special group such as V.I.P.'s and staff, ect. are a great idea for pretty much all forums...

Those hidden forums can be used for many reasons!

Such as hidden forums for staff so they may discuss things and staff issues, ect. ect.

 

We have a Staff Area and that is all. We have had a VIP forum in the past but it was rarely used.

 

That's why you make your V.I.P.'s want to use that hidden forum...

Do V.I.P. only contests and create interesting topics that only V.I.P.'s & staff chat in...

 

Just staff forums that are hidden. Do not see the need to hide anything else. I am thinking about adding a "clubs" section on one of my forums. I might give each club their own forum, and allow the club manager to decide if they want the information public or not.