---
title: "Creating a Members-Only Forum"
description: "Restricting access to your forum is a common requirement for paid communities, internal company boards, or private groups. GravityOps Forum makes this easy through its Access system. ## 1. Understand Access Sets By default, the plugin uses three access sets,…"
url: "https://brightleafdigital.io/docs/creating-a-members-only-forum/"
updated: "2026-10-18"
category: GravityOps Forum / How To Guides Gravityops Forum
---

# Creating a Members-Only Forum

Restricting access to your forum is a common requirement for paid communities, internal company boards, or private groups. GravityOps Forum makes this easy through its Access system.

## 1. Understand Access Sets

By default, the plugin uses three access sets, each representing a different level of permission:

- **Standard User**: Typical logged-in users who can view, create topics, reply, and edit their own posts.
- **Moderator**: Users who can manage content (lock, sticky, delete, edit all posts).
- **Read Only**: Users who can only view content and cannot post or reply.

## 2. Map WordPress Roles to Access Sets

Before restricting a forum, you must ensure your WordPress roles are mapped to the correct access sets:

1. Navigate to **GravityOps** → **Forum** in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click the **Access** tab.
3. You will see a list of available WordPress roles (e.g., Administrator, Editor, Subscriber).
4. For each role, select the appropriate **Access Set** from the dropdown.
   - *Example*: Map "Subscriber" to "Standard User" and "Administrator" to "Moderator".
5. Click **Map Role**.

**Note**: Any role that is not explicitly mapped will have no access to restricted forums (fail-closed security).

## 3. Restrict a Forum

Once your roles are mapped, you can restrict specific areas of your forum:

1. Go to the **Forums** tab in the plugin settings.
2. Click **Manage Forums** for the Board that contains the forum you want to restrict.
3. Find the **Forum** and click **Edit**.
4. Locate the **Access Set** dropdown.
5. Select the level of access needed for this content (e.g., Standard User or Moderator).
6. Click **Update Forum**.

## 4. How Permission Hierarchy Works

The Access system uses a two-tier hierarchy:

1. **User-Role Hierarchy**: Access is granted if your mapped set provides a superset of the forum's requirements. For example, if you assign **Read Only** to a forum, users with **Standard User** or **Moderator** access will automatically have entry.
2. **Forum-to-Topic Inheritance**: All topics within a forum inherit the minimum access requirement assigned at the forum level.

## 5. Testing Your Restrictions

To verify your setup:

1. Log out of your site and try to visit the restricted forum. You should see a "Permission Denied" message.
2. Log in with a user whose role is mapped to "Standard User" and verify they can see the forum.
3. Log in with a user whose role is NOT mapped and verify they are blocked.