Alicornutopia

Aesthetics.

Accessible to logged out people gives players the chance to find out that it exists. Invisible-by-default to logged in people means that most of the time, you're seeing the forum as it's "supposed" to be. Ideally it should be invisible but accessible-by-direct-link to logged in people, but I couldn't find a combination of settings to make that happen.

what if you required people to post using not-character accounts in the OOC? anyone in character could view but we'd have to post with other aliases? Like if I was planning to just have one character I could have Cardea-OOC. but if I had more than one I'd probably change the name to shoal or something.

we would have viewing access always but only posting access with an OOC name

Yeah, it seems like "I can't see the OOC forum when logged in, unless I specifically ask to be able to see the OOC forum when logged in, in which case I can always see the OOC forum when logged in" is... suboptimal?

Making OOC accounts might work, but might be a bit of a nuisance. I'm not sure.

I definitely want access to the OOC forum, whatever way access to the OOC forum ends up shaking out.

I'll try to convey what options I have available.

There are different sets of options for boards and categories. Meta, General and Backstage are categories; Announcements, Discussion, Social, T&C, N&I, OOC Discussion are boards.

A category can be hidden or not; a hidden category is invisible on the front page list of boards-and-categories, but can still be accessed by direct link. Access (meaning ability to read and post) can be available to anyone, members and staff, staff only, or a custom set of groups. Certain groups can be denied access as exceptions to the normal access rules.

A board can be hidden or not, with basically the same meaning as for categories; a non-hidden category is still visible (but appears empty) even if all the boards in it are hidden/invisible. A board can be visible to everyone, members and staff, staff only, or custom groups. Separately, it can be accessible to everyone, members and staff, staff only, or custom groups.

A group can be open, petition, private, or hidden. Open means anyone can join freely, petition means anyone can request to join but must be approved, private means people have to be added manually (not sure what the difference is from petition, presumably it's just that there's no request-adding feature? or maybe private groups can add people without the add-ee's permission?), and hidden means that the group isn't visible. I'm not sure exactly what "visible" means for a group.

So wait, is the backstage forum supposed to be accessible via the link you posted here? I get a permission error when I go there while logged in.

I have a vague idea for a character who has access to the forum through an exchange diary, but I'm trying to figure out how to map that to the forum. I'm debating between them seeing all posts labeled by topic but in chronological order rather than forum structure, or just having their own thread and not being able to see any of the rest of it. I think I'm leaning towards the former, and they can respond to specific topics by using the appropriate heading, but then to keep in character they'd probably make a bunch of new threads in random top-level forums, including in conversational responses, until they figured out proper entry-titling, and that sounds kindof annoying. But if I create one thread that they're limited to, then that allows me to start it out a bit more easily, because they won't have anything to respond to yet and can treat it like it had just been an empty book, plus it makes the problem of topic replies and chronological viewing very straightforward.

Don't suppose anyone else can help me think of a third solution, or even just an elegant way to combine my ideas?

What is an exchange diary?

An exchange diary is a journal that's shared between multiple people - you write an entry in it, then pass it on to the next person and they write in it, and pass it on or pass it back depending on how many people it's being exchanged among.

I haven't quite decided who my character is exchanging their diary *with* aside from, well, the forum, but they will be receiving the book and begin writing in it with the idea that they will be exchanging it with at least one other person. My current idea for setting, which will inform how they get it and who they're exchanging it with, is some sort of oppressive boarding school place plus faerie realm/animism sort of thing I haven't fully worked out, but if you've read Blindsprings or the Chrestomanci books I'm kindof taking atmospheric inspiration from those. The standout scenario in my mind right now is "character's kindly older relative or other authority figure notices that they are lonely, gives them this book saying it will help them make friends, tells them to write in it and then put it somewhere, and that when they pick it up again, a friend will have written back; they do this thing and discover the forum". But it could also just start out as "an exchange diary between two friends, maybe at different schools or in different realms, or maybe in all the same classes but just very fond of writing to each other, who accidentally have a magic happen to their diary and suddenly there are a lot more people in on the exchange than they had bargained for". What I go with will probably depend on whether how many characters I think I'm capable of playing that I manage to create.

Kappa: with the current settings, you get that permission error if you try to access the forum while logged in and not in the Backstage group. As far as I can tell, it's only possible to make a board accessible-but-not-visible, not a category; maybe I should just move the OOC board to Meta?

Tamien: You could assume that their diary entries get filed in the correct location by some combination of the admin and magic.

I am logged in. I do not see Backstage on the homepage. When I follow your link, I see Backstage, which claims to be in Meta. When I’m logged out, I see an extra Backstage category, containing the same folder icon as everything else but with an arrow (probably to indicate it’s a link to a board in a different category); I do not see anything different about Meta, but I can click the Backstage board in the Backstage category and see the same thing as when I click your link here while logged in: a Backstage board claiming to be in Meta.

This seems to be a pretty good arrangement.