You didn’t answer my question in post #14…

As to code changes I will have to pass you over to @mr-papa as I am not sure what changes he is suggesting. He will be along later today.

ive gotten it to work once but when i refreshed the page it went back to forum index. Ive deactivated every plugin one by one and even changed themes and still couldnt get it to work.

not sure I understand how it word work once but refreshing lost it..  its a digital process – works or not…  not working on refresh is quite confusing and indicate something else interfering with query args…

but to rule out buddypress or other using the same query arg name, try this change… in file simple-press/sp-startup/forum/sp-forum-support-functions.php around line 353, find this line:

            if (isset($_GET['group'])) $spVars['singlegroupid'] = sp_esc_int($_GET['group']);

and change it to:

            if (isset($_GET['spgroup'])) $spVars['singlegroupid'] = sp_esc_int($_GET['spgroup']);

and see what happens..