Simple:Press is one of several popular plugins that provide forum functionality for your WordPress site. When used with MemberMouse, you can provision and sell access to Simple:Press forums.
Installing Simple:Press
- In the left column of your WP Admin Panel, select Plugins > Add New
- At the top-right, type simple:press into the search bar
- Click Install Now to begin plugin installation
- When installation is complete, click Activate to enable the plugin
- In the left column of the WP Admin Panel, select Forum > Install Simple:Press
- In the center panel, enter a name for your forum page (Optional)
- Click the blue Perform Installation button to complete Simple:Press installation
Simple Forum Protection
During the installation process, a new page was created on your site. By default, this page is called Forum, but this may have been customized during the installation process. You can globally restrict access to your forums by Protecting this Page with a MemberMouse Membership Level or Bundle.
Limit Certain Forum Permissions to Members
In some situations, you may wish to make certain forums publicly accessible to guests, while limiting others to logged-in members. Since some forums will be accessible without logging into your site, you cannot globally restrict access to the forums page. Instead, you will use features built into Simple:Press to restrict forum access.
Simple:Press includes the concept of User Groups, and several groups are created when the plugin is installed. By default, all MemberMouse members will be assigned to the Members user group. Any visitor to your site who is not logged is considered to be part of the Guest user group.
When Creating a Forum or a Forum Group, you will assign a permissions level to each of your user groups. You can choose from any of your Permissions Sets. The default permissions sets include No Access, Read Only, and Standard Access, among others.
For example, assigning No Access to the Guest user group limits a forum to logged-in members, while assigning Read Only allows guests to view a forum, but prevents them from posting in it.
Advanced Forum Protection
This solution requires custom development. Please contact one of our Implementation Partners for assistance.
If forums are a critical value proposition of your membership site, you may wish to limit access to specific forums based on a member's membership level, or the bundles applied to their account. Simple:Press allows you to create User Groups and map these to custom WordPress roles. By defining these custom roles, and using MemberMouse functionality together with custom scripting, it's possible to adjust forum permissions dynamically to match a member's membership level or bundles.
Note that while Simple:Press has an option in User Group Mapping to limit users to a single group membership, this option should not be enabled, particularly if you are using bundles to map forum permissions.
When linking forum membership to MemberMouse membership levels, the custom WordPress roles you create should be copies of the Subscriber role. In your membership level configuration, you'll Apply WordPress Roles to New Members by selecting the relevant role from the drop-down menu. The custom scripting provided by your developer will be Called by Push Notification or WordPress Hook for the Membership Level Changed event, and depending on the member's new membership level, will switch the WordPress user account to the correct role.
When using bundles to provision forum membership, rather than copying the existing Subscriber role, the roles you create will not have any additional capabilities linked to them. Since bundles can be provisioned or removed in any combination, you will be adding and removing additional roles, rather than switching them. Custom scripting provided by your developer will fire on the Bundle Added and Bundle Status Changed - Active to add the relevant role, and on Bundle Status Changed - Cancelled to remove it.