Frank

I have the same issue! The test-emails do work, but new users get nothing.

In my case disabling the plugin doesn’t even restore the default e-mail sent by WordPress. Bit of an issue.

Edit: never mind, standard e-mail is restored after I disable the plugin. So the issue is simply that with the plugin enabled the welcome e-mail is not sent, even though sending a test-email from the settings page does work.

Cheers, thanks Robin!

I think it’s fixed! Sorry ’bout all the fuss ?? Here’s what happened after my last post:

– I disabled Private Groups and bbPress completely.
– Re-enabled only bbPress and checked the forums as demostudent. All the forums show up, but I can’t see the topics in any of them.
– I’ve set forum ‘Cursusinformatie’ to public instead of private. Now demostudent can see the topics!
– I then set ‘Cursusinformatie’ back to private, and demostudent could still see the topics!
– I then did the same for the other four forums, after which demostudent could now see the topics in all the forums.
– Finally I re-enabled Private Groups after which demostudent could only see the two forums relevant for his year, and importantly: he gets a page-not-found error if he tries to visit the old forums directly via URL.

Succes! ??

Update: I figured that the User Role Editor would be a likely suspect, even though it was de-activated. I decided to activate it once again and check its settings. Apparently for the role ‘Subscriber’ the custom capability ‘read hidden forums’ was activated. I’ve proceeded to reset the settings to WordPress defaults.

This definitely changed something! Now demostudent (subscriber) can still see the two forums he’s supposed to see, but he can now no longer see any of the topics (‘Oh bother! No topics were found here!’). Also: if I try to open an old forum directly via URL I get a page-not-found – which is good! There’s now a difference between trying to visit a forum that is allowed and one that isn’t – except that no topics are now showing.

If I log in as administrator and visit the forum I do get to see the topics.

Will report back!

Thanks for being so thorough, Robin! Here we go:

WordPress version: 3.9.2
bbPress version: 2.5.4
Theme: Twenty Twelve

All other active plugins:
– bbP Private Groups – 2.0.1
– bbPress New Topic Emailer – 1.0 (used to send me a notification when new topics are created)
– Cimy User Extra Fields – 2.5.0 (used to create a field for student number when people register for the site)
– FBF – Facebook Page Feed Widget – 1.2.1 (used to display faculty Facebook-feed)
– Google Analytics – 1.0.5
– Quick Chat – 4.13 (used to put chat-box on the live-stream page)
– SB Welcome Email Editor – 3.7 (used to edit the welcome-e-mail)

Deactivated plugins:
– Hello Dolly – 1.6
– User Role Editor – 3.10

Background info: last year I set all the forums to ‘hidden’ and used the User Role Editor to give students’ accounts access to them (allow them to read hidden forums). Now, with students in different years this will no longer work, and I’d like to use your plugin instead. I have therefore *first* disabled the ‘read hidden forums’ option for all users (so none of the students could read the hidden forums any longer), after which I deactivated the User Role Editor and started setting up your plugin.

Also can you list the private groups settings below:

Forum visibility:
Activate checked? – no, not checked
Redirect pages: – empty, n/a
Freshness settings checked? – no, not checked
Freshness message? – empty, n/a

General settings:
Hide topics and reply counts? – no, not checked
Show descriptions? – no, not checked
Private pre-fix – yes, checked

Group settings
– group1: Staf
– group2: Studenten 2013-2014
– group3: Studenten 2014-2015

These are the names of my forums:
– ‘Cursusinformatie’ (Private, forum groups 1 & 3 checked)
– ‘Bespreking literatuur’ (Private, forum groups 1 & 3 checked)
– ‘Cursusinformatie (2013-2014)’ (Private, forum groups 1 & 2 checked)
– ‘Bespreking literatuur (2013-2014)’ (Private, forum groups 1 & 2 checked)

You can find my website here, and if you want, you can login using credentials demostudent / kijk eens rond. If you do, you’ll be able to see only the two new forums, but if you open any topic and change the URL (you’ll see how) you get access to the old topic (so far all the new topics also exist, with the same name) in the old forums.

Details about user ‘demostudent’: it’s is in private group 3, it’s role is ‘Subscriber’, forum role is set to ‘Participant’.

I’ve manually changed the URL’s of the old forums so that you can no longer do the above trick for the whole forum. After you login as demostudent you can still reach them though:
– Bespreking literatuur (2013-2014)
–Cursusinformatie (2013-2014)

One more thing: under Tools -> Forums -> Repair Forums I’ve recalculated private and hidden forums – to no avail.

I’m going to make a back-up right now and then try to de-activate the other plugins one by one, and see if that makes a difference.

Update: I’ve disabled all of the plugins one by one, then logged off and on as demostudent and checked if that helped. Did not make any difference. All of the plugins (including bbPress) have now been deactivated and re-activated one by one.

Hi Robin!

Confirmed: each forum has a private group set. And like I said it works as expected (you only see the forums that are allowed for your group) as long as visitors don’t play around with the URL’s.

If you are not logged in you cannot see the forums, whether you try via the website or directly via URL. Only logged-in users can see the forums (either the ones they are supposed to see, or the other ones via URL).

I’ve gone about posting this in a noobish way. I thought adding the prefix [Plugin: Private Groups] would automatically link the topic to the plugin, but it doesn’t. In order to increase my chances of reaching the author of the plugin I will re-make this topic using the option at the specific plugin-page. This topic may be closed or deleted.

Quick update: I think it’s fixed! I updated bbPress to the latest version AFTER I installed Private Groups. This was prompted by the fact that I could no longer change the visibility-settings of my forums after installing Private Groups, so I thought there might be an incompatibility there.

Anyway: after de-installing and re-installing Private Groups everything seems to work just fine now!

I may have the same problem. Details:

– WordPress 3.9.2 running Twenty Twelve theme.
– bbPress version 2.5.4
– bbP Private groups version 2.0.1

Steps:

1. Installed plugin
2. Went to Settings –> bbp Private Groups –> Group Name Settings
3. Created three groups (Staff, Students 2013-2014, Students 2014-2015)
4. Went to Forums and created ‘Testforum’. Set visibility to Private and under ‘Forum Groups’ checked only ‘Students 2013-2014’.
5. Created a new user account with Forum Role ‘participant’ and Group ‘Students 2014-2015’

When I log in as the new user, however, I can see Testforum just fine, even though the user is not in the same group. In fact, the new user can see all the other existing forums as well, even though they too are set to ‘students 2013-2014’ only.

What am I doing wrong? What can I try to fix this?

My apologies for this late reply. Things on my side haven’t changed since my last post though: both the form on https://nssl.nl/testsignup2 (cached) as well as https://nssl.nl/signuptest (cached) continue to work. So I have no idea what caused the original problem.

However: I’m currently actually no longer using the form plugin, because sign-ups for the tournament have closed.

Good luck!

Update from my side: form continues to work, but I’m still unsure what caused the problem. Both my non-cached version on nssl.nl/signuptest and the cached-version on nssl.nl/testsignup2 continue to work, so caching really doens’t seem to be the problem…

Thanks Virendar! Using the page source I was able to ascertain which of my pages are currently being served from cache, and those that I’ve specified in the ‘do not cache’ field aren’t, which is good. Also: private pages do seem to get cached.

I have one more question though: the reason I’m trying to exclude one of my pages from the cache is because it has a form on it, which is made using the plugin ‘Visual Form Builder‘. Unfortunately, that form stopped working after (but not directly after) I installed W3 cache, and the maker of the form-plugin suggested (in this topic) that this may be because the security check of the form uses a nonce which gets outdated when the cache ages. Do does anyone know if there is a way to still cache this page without braking the form?

Incidentally: I’m not sure that the caching caused the problem in the first place. I’ve now had a cached page with the form up for more than 24 hours, and the form still works. This looks like a good thing, but it does mean that I don’t know why the form broke in the first place…

Hmm, this is pretty strange. I’ve made two pages, both containing the form:

– /signuptest
– /signuptest2

I’ve set W3 Total cache so that /signuptest is not cached, but signuptest2 is. I expected /signuptest2 to stop working after some time, while /signuptest should keep working. It’s now been 48 hours, however, and both of them are still working. That’s nice, but now I’m still not sure that the cache was the problem…

You might be right! That would explain why I didn’t experience any problems with the form while being logged on, as W3 didn’t serve me the cached pages then. Also: the form on /signuptest has stopped working somewhere today, but after I cleared the cache it worked again!

I’ve now added /signuptest/ to the list of pages never to be cached in W3, and will see if the form continues to operate for the next 24 hours. If it does I’ll be very happy ??

Also: if you manage to reliably solve my problem I’ll definitely buy the Pro-version of your plug-in. I’ve been looking for alternatives and so far have not found anything that is as complete (redirect & e-mail confirmation, for one) as your Visual Form Builder.

However, the current issues are of course a major letdown. If there is any more information you could possibly need, please let me know. Here’s a list of all other plug-ins that are currently activated in my installation:
– W3 Total Cache
– jQuery Collapse-O-Matic
– Shortcodes Ultimate
– Show Private
– Twitter Facebook Social Share
– Twitter Tracker
– WP-Table Reloaded

None of these have been installed recently, exept for W3 Total Cache. However: the problems did not start right after installation of that plugin – I installed it on the 16th of February and on the 17th someone succesfully filled out the form.