Roles, Capabilities, and Selective Reading

I have a network complete with bbPress and sites. One of my sites will have a few bbPress forums. I want to split up the reading capabilities for certain roles. In other words, I don’t want every user to be able to read every forum.

I found a nice plugin that already handles creating new roles and capabilities. I think I understand the process of creating new roles with different capabilities assigned. The plugin I’m using lets me name new capabilities.

I’m not bad at writing simple plugins. I’m a programmer turned social worker and still a programmer. So, to be a little more concrete, here’s my problem.

One of my sites will have a forum for people who deal with a certain issue. It will also have a forum for people married to people who deal with a certain issue.

Neither forum will be visible to the general public. People will have to ask to join either one. I will screen them.

It will not do to just assign everyone as a “Forum Participant” role with the standard capabilities for that role, which includes the “read” capability and this seems to include the ability to read all but the private stuff.

Now, if I create a role called “Private Forum Participant” and add all of the “read_private_*” capabilities, they will all be able to read both forums. Can’t have that.

The approach that I have considered:

• Create two new roles, like “Forum Issue Participant” and “Forum Spouse Participant”.
• Somehow create a couple of new Forum visibilities and corresponding “read_*_*” capabilities.

I am thinking of accomplishing all of this through a plugin that I would write. Problem is, I don’t really know how to go about it. Like I said, I can write plugins, but I’m not so sure of what would go in this one. Any ideas?