Question How do i have 2 types of members but 1 has full access and 1 has limited access to the forum?

As my subject says i have an electrical forum where i have two types of members.
electrical workers who want a private site and the public .
I have set one category for the public and used jrpassphras e to allow automatic registration if you know the pass phrase( which u would if u are an electrician)for the electrical workers.
This works ok apart from when the public posts they cant log in and therefore don't get emailed when there is a reply to their post and they have to keep checking back to see if there is a reply.

My question is is the another way to tackle this problem? any creative soulutions?
www.sparkyforum.co.nz

cheers

See Allow only specified users to view/post (private part of forum)

Hi and thanks for the link iguess i could open up registration to everyone then get the electrical workers to email me with proof they are who they say they are then set permissions for them (messy) but i was trying to have it automated and less cumbersome.Hence the use of a passphrase.
How would other people handle different access levels of people? it it all email?
Thanks

I think I understand your situation. You want some automation, at registration time, to categorise your members into the "generalists" and the "specialists" and then feed these different classes of users with different forum content.

As far as setting up the forum categories is concerned, the information I offered you before takes care of the how things work by relying upon Joomla's inbuilt ACL security mechanisms. If, on the other hand, you want to rely on some pass-phrase technique then it probably comes as a disappointment to you to reply that I know of no such method that works in Kunena.

The approach is to have people register and then, somehow, categorise the membership. If I understand in correctly, you want this categorisation to be done seamlessly and automatically. The result of this categorisation is to apply different ACL rules for these "specialist" accounts.

The good news is that there are products that do this (although I, personally, have no first-hand experience how to use them). The alternative method is to perform the user categorisation manually, as we do here at www.kunena.org . We, too, have categories on this forum that exist but that are not accessible to the general public or to "limited access" logged-in accounts. Therefore the solution is not only possible but it is proven. The question that you need to wrestle with is whether a reliable, secure, automated means can be found to categorise your site membership or whether you're comfortable doing this sorting "by hand".

Ok thanks for your insight, much appreciated will have a hunt around for a solution

Good luck and let us know what you find.