How can I set up a members only forum?

  • Unknown's avatar
    damonshaw · Member ·

    Hi,

    I am looking into setting up a members only forum with poll options. Is WordPress a good option? Can anyone give me leads on where to look for more information?

    Thanks in advance

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    If what you mean is you want to register username accounts and passwords, you cannot do that on any wordpress.com hosted blog. You can password protect only pages and posts. You cannot set up a membership by registration site. For that type of functionality you’d need a self-hosted site running on a paid web hosting service.

    There is no FTP access and no blogger installed plugin capability on any free hosted WordPress.COM blogs and there is no upgrade you can purchase here that changes that reality.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/ftp-access/
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/

    None of the WordPress.COM plans allow for a fully fledged membership by registration site, including being able to provide usernames and passwords.

    See here for all that can be done on any WordPress.com blog http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/ http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

    Here at WordPress.COM you can have either a public or a private blog and there is no limitation on the total number of contributors to any blog. If you’d like to invite others to publish posts or help approve comments on your blog, you can invite them to be a Contributor, Editor, or Author. If you want users to receive updates each time you publish new content you can invite them to be a follower/viewer.

    To change blog visibility to Private go to > Settings > Reading scroll to Blog Visibility and choose option 3. See the guide here http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings

    The person will have to register a username account which requires an email address only, but does not need to register a blog. That requirement is because the software has to be able to differentiate between hackers and official users and allow access only to those with username accounts and official roles on the blog.

    They will need to click the “Accept Invitation” button in the invitation email. If they are logged into their WordPress.com account, they will be taken directly to your blog. If not, they will be taken to the log-in screen, where they can either log in or create a new user account.

    Note that users who create a new WordPress.com account at that point will still need to return to the invitation email and click the “Accept Invitation” button after doing so.

    Lastly, there is a built-in spammer prevention so send out only 10 invitations at one point in time and then wait and manage those before sending out 10 more.

    For your WordPress.COM blog you have three free workaround forum options: http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/04/23/wordpress-com-forum-options/
    One approach is to register a forum on the internet and then create a custom menu in your blog and include a custom link to the forum in it.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-custom-links

    For polls see https://en.support.wordpress.com/polls/

    The Tlk.io widget allows you to embed a web chat in your WordPress.COM hosted blog. http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/tlk-io-widget/ There are no other chat options I know of that work on WordPress.COM blogs at this time.

    You may prefer to get web hosting http://wordpress.org/hosting and set up your own wordpress.ORG software install. WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support forums. Read the differences here http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

    If you don’t have a username account at WordPress.ORG click http://wordpress.org/support/ and register one on the top right hand corner of the page that opens, so you can post to the support forums there. For hosting see https://wordpress.org/hosting/

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