Try the Getting Started section of the Codex – especially the pages on User Groups, Permissions and Access Control.

The main first question is how are these individual users identified? Or is it simply a manual process?

Either way (manual or some sort of automated process) you will simply need to create a special User Group to hold these specific members. When you create the forum you assign the new User Group whatever permission set you want but clearly one that allows for creating topics/posts etc. And you assign all other User Groups their appropriate permission set which does not allow for some of those things.

Again – you may need to create new permission sets to suit your needs.

And the first question will determine how members are assigned to this new ‘special’ user group.

Okay, thanks.

So my next question is: if I have a member, how can I assign this member to a certain user group so they can see and access the private forum?

Well that was why I asked the question above: How are these individual users identified? Or is it simply a manual process?

If they are created in a separate WordPress role then simply map them to a User Group (User Groups > Map Users to User Groups). If not and the process has to be manual then visit the User Group management admin page and click on the Add Member button. Hopefully fairly obvious from then ion…

Okay, I found it. Will be adding them in ‘bulk’ as WP users and then adding them to the user group. Thanks!

np. glad to help…

Okay, so I used ‘Add Multiple Users’ WP plug in to add 56 users.

Then I assigned them one by one – scrolling up and down back and forth in the ‘Add user’ box in S:P – to the user group that has access to the private forum.

This worked okay, but it was ‘a lot of’ work (relatively speaking, especially when I’m thinking I might need to to this many times).

Can I do this automatically somehow? I mean: can I automatically add a certain group of WP users to a certain S:P user group. I don’t mean mapping over WP roles, but for instance everyone who had a password starting with ‘mp14’. Or any other method, given that I am entering these users myself in WP, so I can give them any user name or password.

If you are adding these to WordPress manually then how are you doing it and why do you not just utilise WordPress roles so they CAN be automatically mapped to SP User Groups? That’s how WP and SP work…

If you do not want to take advantage of the methods supplied then you know the add member tool available or – I suppose – you could run queries against your database which would do the trick. But these all require manual intervention whereas using the built in mechanics of the system do things for you.

Okay, so would that mean that for that particular forum I would define a particular new WP role? And use that to sign up members and then map them, over to S:P?

Correct.

So then you just would need a plugin for creating WordPress roles. We use one on this site which seems to work very well called Capability Manager.

Create the role(s) you want. Use the Map User Groups to map an SP Group to a WP Role and then when you add new members just make sure you place them in the correct role which is a drop down select list on the WP Add User panel.

Okay, I understand! Thank you very much.

I hope that works well for you…

In the end, everything is beautiful and nothing crashes.

Excellent!