posting to an "invisible" forum

[Rob Weaver]

This sounds like a strange idea, but let me explain ...

Some of my moderators want to set up a series of site awards (funniest post of the year, silliest post of the year, best posted suggestion etc etc).

They want to allow any member to nominate individual posts and to put those nominations into a a forum that can only be read by moderators. The idea is that those nominated would not know they had been nominated and also to prevent comments on the nominations.

I know how to make a 'private' forum but is this possible?

The only other way I can think of is using the private messaging system, which is a great tool, but in this case could prove a bit cumbersome.

Any suggestions?

[Steve Machol]

This requires hacking. Ask over at vbulletin.org.

[Floris]

Yeah this is possible,

Add a new forum, and then goto permissions, and go through each usergroup's permission 'can view board: no'. excempt the ones like admins/ super mods/ moderators, they can view and etc.

Then everybody else but those staff members see that forum, oh, and when you add the forum, make sure you set it as 'private' so it doesn't get listed too on forumhome.

You can make a 'fake' account, to test registered members and logout to test as a guest, if it shows up.

Hopefully you understand what to do

admin control panel > forums > add

then

admin control panel > forums > permissions > newly add forum : usergroup [edit] .


enjoy



TIP
You could make a COPY of the original thread so they don't even know their thread has been moved.



steve: this doesn't require any hacking, its a vb feature? or did i misread?
I think they can use the 'report this post' feature as 'nominate this post' - only needs a few template changes too.

[Steve Machol]

But then how would regular members post to this forum?

[Floris]

001 - Adding a new forum, set it private
002 - Forum permissions, edit the newly added forum
003 - If you want to give mods etc (usergroups) permission, do it through usergroup settings
004 - If someone nominated a thread/post/user, you can search for this user and then edit their access masks
005 - Edit the Access Masks for this user, and give him/her permission to access this forum

[Rob Weaver]

001 - Adding a new forum, set it private
002 - Forum permissions, edit the newly added forum
003 - If you want to give mods etc (usergroups) permission, do it through usergroup settings
004 - If someone nominated a thread/post/user, you can search for this user and then edit their access masks
005 - Edit the Access Masks for this user, and give him/her permission to access this forum

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl.

[Icheb]

Why not just deactivate "Can view others' threads" for normal members? User X can nominate by starting a new thread and User Y can't see what User X has voted, but he can nominate himself by creating a new thread.

[Rob Weaver]

Thanks, that's another good option.