Well I think the plug-in has many good features.  I am an experienced WordPress user (have built over 100 sites and taken a course).  I never utilize the feature allowing others to sign into my site.  Obviously I understand that this is a plug-in, but the community is not private without the use of another plug-in.  I think that is a significant and frustrating limitation.  If guests with certain user levels are able to register, then what is the point of having the limited access?  There is complete access for anyone who wants to register, which is the opposite of privacy.

I do not want to switch to another now that I have paid for this one.  The Theme My Plug-in options were not easy to use.  They had instructions that were not user friendly (none related to membership sign on).  I have used many plug-ins and believe I know the difference.

Can you suggest a plug-in that is easy to use involving membership?

What email settings do I need to check to verify why this person would not receive an email?  I’m assuming I have not set something properly, but I do not know what that is.

Thank you.

This is particularly true given that you advertise that Simple Press allows private communities, which it does not, without using another plug-in.

Tina Willis said
This is particularly true given that you advertise that Simple Press allows private communities, which it does not, without using another plug-in.

Yes it does. Please, please for the last time.

If you want to check users before they are allowed on your website you need some sort of plugin. You have repeatedly said you want to do this.

If you do not want any Tom, Dick or Harry to register on your website you need a plugin. You have repeatedly said you want to do this.

If you do NOT want the above then fine – you don’t need a plugin and Simple:Press can ensure your forums are as private as you want. And now I am just repeating myself over and over and over again.

As I have already said I have no personal experience of other membership plugins.

For email check (1) that your own email set in WordPress is correct. (2) that your email server recognises the domain you are sending from.

Also WordPress sends ALL of the emails out as coming from ‘WordPress’. Most users do not like this so (3) on the forum admin > options > email settings we have set up overrides that can be used instead. WordPress has filters for these. Ensure they are set correctly. If all else  fails join the club. But the plugin recommended does the trick for us and other users we have talked to.

As I keep repeating, if anyone can register, then the site is not private.

Since you advertise the forum has this functionality, that is misleading.  

That would be like saying this plug in offers pop-ups, then telling me I need a plug-in for pop ups.

This isn’t about my email settings, another user has tried to register, been told he would receive an email, and not received it.  I think he is experienced enough to know how to receive emails if they are sent.

So I guess I have a non-private forum unless and until I find and learn another plug-in for membership.  I just tried one that is simple, but requires me either to choose private for *each* page or *each* category.  That is unworkable with this plug-in.  That also might be the reason for no emails (the fact that I have a membership plug-in now installed per your instructions). I have no idea.  That’s why the lack of integration is not user-friendly.  I’m willing to learn.  I don’t see anyone teaching me how to make this private, which is what you advertise.

How do I make this private, so that no one on planet Earth can view the forum without my approval? If I can’t do that, how is this plug-in private?  It isn’t.  

I give up. And that’s a first!
Ike/Steve – over to one of you please.

I dont see the problem…  you can completely control who sees what in the forum… the access allowed by permission sets, user groups and forums provides that built in with simple pres… period. dot.

the use of a membership plugin can allow you to more easily automate that process, true…  but not required…  your call whether you want to use one or not…  remember, users belong to WordPress, not Simple Press…

but lets say you just want to do it the brute force way…

so have any user user that registers become a wp subscriber…  map that subscriber role in simple press over to a user group called pending…   assign user group pending with a permission set of no access to every forum on your site…  those self registered users will have absolutely no access to your forum… 

now at your leisure and choice, when you want the user to have some sort of access to your forum, simply manually approve and move that user into another user group called members…  assign the permission set standard access (or whatever role you want) and user group members to the forums you want them to access…  now they can access the forums…

as we have been saying, you can make your forums as private or public as you want…  you have complete control… 

Sorry, but I am struggling to see your confusion or issue..

Mr Papa said

but lets say you just want to do it the brute force way…

so have any user user that registers become a wp subscriber…  map that subscriber role in simple press over to a user group called pending…   assign user group pending with a permission set of no access to every forum on your site…  those self registered users will have absolutely no access to your forum… 

That makes sense.  However, how to do this is not clear to me (specifically what options to choose to “map that subscriber role in simple press over to a user group called pending.”).

However, after much trial and error with various membership plug-ins, I think I have found a solution that works.  I am in the process of checking and will ask again if this does not work.

I am also going to read back through this thread to try to find the plug-ins that I need.  The links I visited yesterday for the plug-ins just took me to long descriptions with downloads hard to find. I will be back if I can’t find them.

Thanks,

Tina

you can map users to sp usergroups by wp role on forum – usergroups – map users to usergroups….

okay, we will be here…

Taking a look at the WordPress Plugin Directory there are plenty of plugins out there that can help you to customise your site to whatever degree you like. For example, using the New User Approve plugin, you get the chance to personally approve every registration, and only upon approving does the user receive login credentials via email. I’ve not personally used this plugin but it seems to do what you want – This is a WordPress thing not a Simple:Press thing.

You can do everything you need within Simple:Press itself (see Forum > User Groups > Map Users to User Groups). Here you can choose what SP usergroup a WP user ends up in. If you want to keep the forum completely private, you can have a usergroup set up with no access and by default have all new users end up in said usergroup who will in turn not be able to view the forum. Now I know this doesn’t really suit your needs, but it is in fact one way to keep Simple:Press completely private – Just an example..

You can take that as far as you like. You can also manually move users from one usergroup to another (In Forum > User Groups > Manage User Groups) allowing you to pick and choose who can view the forum – Not as practical as using a membership plugin or an approval plugin, but just another example of how you can achieve this within the Simple:Press admin options.

Looks like Steve beat me to it!..

For plugin downloads, If you find one you want to download from the list’s we posted yesterday, it will be in the list on the Member Plugins page, just click the title to download.

Ike said

Ref post #6

It’s hard to recommend which plugins you would find most useful as it’s different for everyone and as Andy has pointed out, you haven’t really given us an idea of what you want to be able to do / control. Things like how many users you have / expect to have, and what you are using your forum for really dictate what plugins you will find most useful, although a few basic plugins that might help you get started are:

‘Admin Bar – Post Control’ – Invaluable really – Only displaying to admins it adds a control to the top of the forum itself which allows you to monitor every new post made on the forum. When the admin bar is open you can view posts without having to visit threads. There are a few controls to reply, mark as read, delete etc.. Also the admin bar offers Akismet support (spam plugin) if you run that on your WP site. More info.

‘User Warnings and Suspensions’ – This plugin is really useful if you want a little more control over undesirable users / posts. More info.

‘Forum Post Captcha’ – Really useful spam prevention plugin, adds a drag and drop captcha which can’t really be beaten! You can add it to the registration page to, to deal with spam signups. More info.

‘Report Post to Admins’ – Again really if you like the idea of having a little more control over what goes on, this plugin will allow users to report posts directly to you. More info.

‘Subscriptions – Topic and Forum’ – Pretty useful for most forums.. Simply allows users to subscribe to topics or entire forums and receive email updates upon replies. You can customise this plugin through the WP admin – see Forum > Components > Subscriptions. More Info.

‘Preview Forum Posts’ – Another invaluable one, adds a ‘Preview’ button when making posts. Unless it’s just a quick reply most people like to preview their posts before they submit.

‘Private Messaging’ – Does what it says basically! Pretty useful for people to get in contact with you as an admin if you think that would be something you’d find useful, if not other members have the option to privately talk to each other. You can restrict the use of the PM system through permissions, and also through the Private Messaging tab that will appear in your WP forum page once the plugin has been activated. More info.

There are others that are incredibly useful, I’ve just tried to pick out the ones that will help you keep the forum clean / up to date / spam free.

Hope this helps!

Okay, so here we go again.  I have infrequently uploaded plug-ins.  Usually I use plug-ins from the WP editor.

So, I downloaded some plug-ins, then I extracted from zipped file, which leads me to many other files.  I tried uploading the zipped file (which failed), then, after extracting the zipped file on my computer, I tried uploading one of the many interior files, including the one with the word “install” included (which failed).  Would you please explain how I upload the plug-ins?  The first one I tried was the admin bar, which is the one that failed via multiple attempts.

Thank you.

did you treat them as wp plugins or simple press plugins?  they are the latter…  see:  https://simple-press.com/documentation/codex/plugins/plugin-basics/using-plugins/

so please explain the steps and what you saw (ie errors)…