Public forum view - before login

[wbonekamp]

We are considering putting the forum before the login. is this possible?
Can we set it up so that people can see everything, but only ask questions or provide answers when they're logged in?
Can we anonymize users before logging in? And so that, when logged in, you can see their real names?

[johnhenley]

Hi @wbonekamp!

Yes you can set up security so that posts are visible to unauthenticated users:
https://github.com/DNNCommunity/Dnn.CommunityForums/wiki/Control-Panel#security-v-82-and-newer

The forums module uses DNN tokenizing/profile property access, so you should use the visibility options on the profile fields to hide the values from unauthenticated users.

[wbonekamp]

I changed the DNN profile property fields firstname, middlename and lastname to access only for members but I can still see the name in public view.

Are you sure the name of the author in the forum is based on the DNN profile properties? not a forum displayname?

[johnhenley]

I changed the DNN profile property fields firstname, middlename and lastname to access only for members but I can still see the name in public view.

Are you sure the name of the author in the forum is based on the DNN profile properties? not a forum displayname?

I apologize; I was looking at the [USER:*] tokens, which are for the user viewing the page rather than the author of a post.

For the [FORUMAUTHOR:*] tokens, they are not using the visibility options.

If you want to create an issue, one (easier) option would be to change the behavior of this module option:

It currently only controls whether you can get a hyperlink to a user's profile page, but it could be changed to hide all profile-related fields (I don't know if people really use this option or not anyway).

Otherwise, we could adopt the DNN platform approach of looking up the visibility on each profile field but that would be much more work. And I don't see that "display name" or "username" profile properties even have a visibility option ....

[johnhenley]

Otherwise, we could adopt the DNN platform approach of looking up the visibility on each profile field but that would be much more work. And I don't see that "display name" or "username" profile properties even have a visibility option ....

BTW, I looked at the platform code, and display name is visible to anonymous users....

[johnhenley]

Add an issue if you want to.

[wbonekamp]

I also changed this setting but unfortunaltely it doesn't affect the author name view based on DNN profile view settings:

[wbonekamp]

Is it possible to make changes in the template (if then alse) to only show the authorname for registered users?

[johnhenley]

Is it possible to make changes in the template (if then alse) to only show the authorname for registered users?

Not at this but definitely adding [IF: structures/tokens is something we've talked about. I definitely think [IF:USER:ISAUTHENTICATED] would be a good idea. Add an issue if you agree.