Support Forum

Interesting setup that I need input on…

MN Melanie Nelson
Melanie Nelson
Member
Member since Feb 2013
24 posts
Mar 4, 2013 · 12:48 pm · Edited

Okay, my client just threw me for a loop, so I’m wondering if you all might be able to give me some ideas or suggestions on what I could do.

We’re selling courses on a site we’re working on.  There will be videos for each course that people can purchase to have access to. (We’re integrating WooCommerce, Simple:Press and WishList together to pull this off.)  The idea was, when someone purchased a course they would (as far as the forums go):

1) have access to a private forum for the course (this is done, no problem

2) Each video in the course will have a forum dedicated to it that a user can ask questions specifically about that single video (this is done, no problem)

here’s where it gets fun :)

3) Some of the courses are actually limited, and will have access to an instructor (meaning, the class will take registrations until a certain date, when *everyone* who registered will have access to the forums and instructor, who will answer questions etc. After a week, the forums will close.

Now, the shutting off/turning on access to the forums is no issue – but now the wrinkle that was tossed to me this morning is that the site owner wants members to retain the forums they had access to.  I.e. they buy a course, they ask questions for the week the course is going on, and after the course is over, they can still access that forum, but can’t contribute to it anymore.  It’ll be for reference only.

On top of that, if the class is made available again, she wants the new “class” group to have the same setup – however they won’t be able to see the previous forum (from the class before), and the people who took the class before should not be able to see any *new* stuff that’s posted in the new class.

(I hope that all makes sense!)

The only way I can figure on accomplishing this just does not scale well. It’ll mean the creation of multiple forums and membership levels – and with multiple courses that can do this, it’ll turn into a scalability nightmare.  Would anyone have any ideas on how I could accomplish what she wants, without it turning into a beached whale?

2 Answers

New Answer
YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Mar 5, 2013 · 1:59 am

I read this last night – slowly shaking my head… but wanted to come back this morning for a fresh read to see if it looked any better. It doesn’t :)

Steve or Brandon may have some ideas but I am afraid I don’t. Short of, as you say, creating a beast.

MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member
Member since Dec 2006
19,448 posts
Mar 5, 2013 · 8:43 am

like Andy, wanted to read through this several times in the AM on fresh day… ;)

quite a complex scenario here…

I think you could fairly simply get most of the way there…  the real sticking point, I think, is going to be the ability for older and newer classes to have access to the same forum but not see each others posts…  I think it would be straight forward to have a former class usergroup and a current class usergroup on a forum with different permissions – ie one cannot post and one can… but they still get to see all the posts in the forum…

We have a feature where you can limit users to only seeing their posts and those of admins, but that is not quite what you want here – since they wont see posts from classmates and would still see admin posts to the new class…

We are also considering adding a private topic feature – in fact its currently slated for next release though unsure if it will make it or not.  For the private topic feature we were planning the ability for a private topic to be between the user and the admin… only the starter of the topic and the admins would be able to see that topic…  What you really want is private topics but have the ‘privacy’ controlled by usergroup(s) instead of the topic starter…  then when a topic is created, you would give access to it for the current class usergroup…  no other classes would be able to see it…

obviously have only thought about this briefly, but seems like it might be possible to do via plugin…  new column in topics table for which usergroups can see…  alter the forum/topic view class query to account for that private topic…  on new topic creation, set the new topic column to the current usergroup…   just thinking out loud here…