Basic Questions - Private Forum Possible?

[macrophotofly]

Hi,
We have an existing cycling club of around 200 members who we are looking to move on to a Forum for announcements and interactions around rides. We are looking to control the forum membership to our club membership and to use real names. I'd like to see if this is possible on the demo.
How would you set the forum up to allow admins to approve a new member (before they can post)?
Is there a way to make the username default to the users real name?

 

[Paul B]

There is no way to force people to use their real name.
You can use regex to force a first name and last name and A-Za-z'-, but other than that they can enter whichever name they choose.

Account approval can be set in the options.
Moderation of initial posts can be set in the permissions.

 

[macrophotofly]

Many thanks. Regex is an add-on or an existing component ?

 

[Paul B]

It's a default option.

 

[Dan Hawkins]

You can exclude all threads or even certain ones from visitors (non-registered users)
I.E. if you don't want all visitors to see where your meetings - you can exclude that node/forum. But if you want them to see the general chat (to gain interest) you can allow the to view without registering.

You can also set it on the usergroup directly (rather than node/forum specific)



For more info on permissions, see Brogan's guide here;
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/implementing-permissions-across-multiple-user-groups.358/

And this thread from Jake:
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/understanding-permissions.360/

 

[Dan Hawkins]

End comment - XenForo is completely customisable to what you require.... Definitely worth it! All of what you need is built in too.

 

[Alteran Ancient]

If you wanted to, you could force Sign-ups via Facebook and Google+ - which would use their "real name" automatically. But then you're limiting yourself to people who have/use Facebook.