Using Secondary Usergroups in wpForo WordPress Forum Plugin

One of the main advantages of wpForo forum plugin is the Secondary Usergroups feature. Using the Secondary Usergroups you can set more than one Usergroup to a forum user in user management pages, such as My Profile > Account on forum front-end and in Dashboard > Users > Edit User admin page. Granting multiple Usergroups to users you can grant different accesses to different forums.

Secondary Usergroups are the same Usergroups listed in Dashboard > Forums > Usergroups admin page. You should edit certain Usergroup and enable the “Can be also used as Secondary Usergroup” option to use it as Secondary Usergroup:

Let’s consider an example

We need to create three levels of access to different forums. We have 3 Usergroups UG 1, UG2, UG3  and 3 Forums F1, F2, F3. For example, each Usergroup should have standard access to one forum and no accesses to others.  All users with UG1 Usergroup should be able to view/discuss in F1 forum, all users with UG2 should be able to view/discuss in F2 forum and so on… To do this you should edit those forums one by one, find the “Forum Permission” settings and set the following combinations of Usergroups and Forum Accesses:

1. As you know, all regular users already have a Primary Usergroup “Registered”. For this Usergroup set No Access for F1, F2, and F3 to only allow wpForo work based on Secondary Usergroup accesses.
2. Set Standard Access for UG1 in F1 forum settings and set No Access for other Usergroups
3. Set Standard Access for UG2 in F2 forum settings and set No Access for other Usergroups
4. Set Standard Access for UG3 in F3 forum settings and set No Access for other Usergroups

Now we can grant access to a user with Level 2 to Forums F1 and F2 using the Secondary Usergroups we configured above.

Just edit that user and set Secondary Usergroups according to levels. If a Level 2 user should be able to access to F1 and F2 forums you should set that user Secondary Usergroups UG1 and UG2. Level 3 users should have three Secondary Usergeoups UG1, UG2 and UG3, so they’ll be able to access to all three forums F1, F2, F3. And so on…

Related Discussions on wpForo Community:

• https://wpforo.com/community/?wpfin=tag&wpfs=secondary%20usergroup
• https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/change-user-group/
• https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/user-role-is-not-syncing-with-secondary-usergroup/
• https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/how-to-add-multiple-users-to-one-usergroup-how-to-assign-one-user-to-multiple-usergroups/#post-19983

wpForo Documentation:

• https://wpforo.com/docs/root/categories-and-forums/forum-manager/add-new-forum/
• https://wpforo.com/docs/root/wpforo-settings/forum-accesses/
• https://wpforo.com/docs/root/members/usergroups-and-permissions/