Private forum for some of my visitors

[troels nybo nielsen]

I would like to give some of the visitors to one of my websites a private forum. Problem is that I should not myself have access to that forum. One of my ideas about this forum is that those people should be able to discuss my person and my website without me being able to read their words.

Any ideas how to do this?

[Marketing Guy]

Pretty much anything hosted on your own site you will have access to. Even if you don't, then a lot of people still will think you do.

Perhaps considering finding a 3rd party provider to host and maintain the forums?

Scott

[troels nybo nielsen]

> Perhaps considering finding a 3rd party provider to host and maintain the forums?

That seems to be the only way, yes. But this alone will not solve all problems. I can imagine a number of demands that must be made:

1. There must be a password gate that the users trust.

2. The forum should be hosted outside Scandinavia so that the techies cannot be expected to be able to read the posts.

3. The forum must be easy to handle. I cannot be sure to find a moderator that knows a lot about computers and webmastering.

4. The forum must be free.

Can anyone recommend a company that offers such a service? Feel free to sticky me if you believe that a URL or a company name will be against the ToS.

[Marketing Guy]

Would Yahoo Groups be an option?

Can users set up private forums?

Scott

[troels nybo nielsen]

I know very little about Yahoo groups. They seem to be very easy to use, but I think that you have pointed to the exact problem with them: I have not investigated this thoroughly, but it is my impression that you cannot set up private forums and decide whom you will let in.

[stevedob]

but it is my impression that you cannot set up private forums and decide whom you will let in.

They DO provide the facility for approved membership, with access to the messages restricted to those members. The problem would be that YOU would be the admin for it, and would therefore have access to the messages. As with the other suggestions, you would need a 3rd party to be the admin, who could manually submit membership requests for your approval.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Thanks. The way to do this then seems to be that I convince one of my visitors to start a Yahoo Group?

[Marketing Guy]

Perhaps you could create a walkthrough guide to setting up a group, with relevant links, etc?

Include in this your reasoning for not including a discussion forum on a site, and the benefits of your members having private discussions and then encourage people to volunteer to set groups up.

Maybe even provide them a way of listing the groups name and topic or angle on your site, thereby keeping your site the focus of the subject area.

Scott

[troels nybo nielsen]

Always having the marketing aspect in mind, right Scott? :)

Thanks. This is WebmasterWorld, the place to ask your questions about webmastering and have good answers.

[MWpro]

You can use invision board for this

It gives you the power to create hidden categories or forums for a certain group, and you can add whomever you want to this group (you don't have to add yourself, so that is how you can do it if you aren't supposed to access it.)

[Marketing Guy]

>Always having the marketing aspect in mind, right Scott?

Always! ;)

MWpro has a point - I think most forum software allows you to create private forums.

I use Snitz forums on one of my sites. With that you can easily create a private forum and assign who has access to it.

Im sure there must be software that allows you to create a user-administrated forum.

Scott

[Ankheg]

Another, *possibly* easier option would be to use a private mailing list, one where all the recipients are clearly visible. I host a few for customers, and know that, generally, there is no local copy of any of the sent messages stored. It'd be good enough, I'd think, for the slightly paranoid...