Question is it possible to have a category that is public and private?

What i am trying to do is as follows:

I would like to have a forum that is only for registered guests but would also like to have a message board where anyone can leave a message...

Is this possible?

Thanks./

I think the only way you can achieve this is to create two categories. One that allows public posts and the other that does not allow public posts.

I do not think you are able to do that in Kunena as the public/provate read/write is set in the configuration of the forum ... not for each cat.

What I want is a forum that everyone can read but must be logged in to write

AND
1 category called message board where any visitor can post a message to...

You have answered your question: it is not possible to achieve everything you have asked:

You can allow the public to post to message boards on a all-or-none basis. Either they can post or they can't post. This is a global Kunena setting.

If you set site-wide, public write access you can't restrict that access in one category. You can, if you like, restrict access to a category so that only registered users (for example) have viewing rights but that's not what you want to do, is it? If you restrict a category in the way I've just mentioned, public users won't be able to write ... but they won't be able to read, either.

You could lock a forum so that only moderators and admins could create new discussion topics, but that, too, isn't a very satisfactory solution.

The only other suggestion I would offer, if this is important, is to create two websites: one that allows public contributions and the other that disallows public contributions but still permits public view of the discussions. There's your answer.

Personally, I wouldn't allow unregistered user contributions on the discussion forums. However, if you wanted to obtain public comment on website feature articles, you could use the discussbot approach. Have you considered that?

beachfront71, your conclusion is correct. This fine control over access is not possible. I would agree with you that this control should be at the category level and not in the config part. If this is a feature request please add it to uservoice .