secure private forum

[johntech]

Hi, I want to host a secure private forum with confidential content (document upload + discussion) for a group of users that the forum administrator has control over (no user self sign up) Except the login page, (with SSL required) everything should not be seen (include the sub session nam of the forum) by public. Can vBulletin support this?

Regards,
John T.

[Colin F]

Yes, that can be done with vBulletin.

[johntech]

hi Colin, do I need some special instruction/support to do this, or this is well explained in user guide/manual ? thanks

[Colin F]

You'd be basically setting up forumpermissions, which is explained in the manual. If you have specific questions we'll be glad to help you though.

[renep]

I have a forum exactly like that (except for SSL). It works fine.

Basic instruction: create a forum, create a usergroup, deny other usergroups permissions on the forum (in particular 'Can view forum' or 'Can view thread content'), allow your special usergroup permissions, make users a member of that group.

You'll probably want to make it a secondary usergroup that assigns only the permissions needed for this forum and no other permissions. And you want to make it not publically joinable.

It's in the sections on usergroups and forum permissions in the manual.

[feldon23]

Except the login page, (with SSL required) everything should not be seen (include the sub session nam of the forum) by public. Can vBulletin support this?
This is up to you to configure the server to hide that folder from the world. If it's Apache, you can use .htaccess to limit by IP address, referrer, or password protect the directory.

Without any programming, you can greatly limit what is visible on a vBulletin forum before the user is logged in, to the point of seeing nothing but a login box.

[stryker43]

Is there anyway I can set the entire vbulletin board to run using https? Our entire board is confidential and we want to use https for all transmissions. I'm new to vbulletin and I can't seem to figure out where to tell it to use https instead of http.

Thanks for any help!

[Steve Machol]

Set the forum URL to https:

Admin CP -> vBulletin Options -> Site Name / URL / Contact Details -> Forum URL

[stryker43]

I tried that and changed http://www.domain.com/forum to https://www.domain.com/forum and it still has only http for all the links and won't use the https.

Thanks

[Colin F]

If you access the forum with https:// and the Forum URL is https:// then all the links should be correct.