Solved View only topics that the user has created

I have been asked how to set up Kunena so that a user can see only the posts he/she has created. Obviously, a moderator would be allowed to view all posts. Is there a recognized and recommended way to do this?

Use the My Topics menu item.

The request was in the context of restricting access to any other posts. In other words, is there a way to block a user from ever seeing any posts except those he/she created. Is there a standard way to do that?

Sounds like you want a help desk system, yes?

the answer is NO.

It is theoretically possible to create a Kunena template and restrict users to being able to view their own topics and no-one else's. I have been thinking about building a Kunena template that would achieve this kind of result.

Under the current design of Kunena, it is possible to assign each user their own, separate forum category. By giving each user their own, separate forum category, you could restrict access using Joomla ACLs—you would need to create a unique Joomla ACL identifier for each user on your website.

In practical terms, however, 810 is correct. The current design of Kunena does not make things easy (or possible) to transform it from a general-purpose discussion forum into a help desk product.

These last two responses point to the information I was looking for: There is no standard approach to doing this in Kunena.

This question did not originate from me. I was asked about this from a website developer because I work and consult on Joomla's ACL. My advice was to override select template files and inject the additional filtering needed. (But I wanted to ask here in case the Kunena community knows of a best practice for this.)

Injecting additional filtering from a template override should add the needed security, but it often creates usability issues: The model returns paginated results without realizing that most items will be stripped. As a result, many pages are needlessly shown, and these pages are sparsely populated and even empty. So...

Were someone paying me to solve this, I would first look at writing a plugin that would modify the SQL for searching the database and restrict the results to just those posts started by the current user (unless the user belongs to an access level that is allowed to see all content, or at least the current category's content). That way, pagination knows how many items/pages are to be displayed, and there is less server processing of unneeded records. Further advantage, a plugin solution would work regardless of whatever template is being used.

As I wrote, it's theoretically possible to modify the Kunena template source code so that users can see only those topics that they're "supposed" to see (and to see no-one else's topics). It's also theoretically possible to define certain categories to behave in this particular way.

For example, you could create a category (or categories) for "help desk purposes" and, with the help of a Kunena template, allow people to create topics in that category/those categories, that only they (and the forum moderators) would be able to see. You could also have other "general purpose" categories where everyone could see all topics.

I don't think it's impossible but I do think it would take a bit of work to design things so that you got the result that you were looking for. Alternatively, as you suggested, you could write a plugin. I am sure that people would be interested if you were to develop such a plugin.

But, at this time, there is no "standard" approach to converting Kunena into a help desk system.

If I find the time, I might look at writing that plugin as a challenge. If I do, I'll return to this forum and post to announce it.

BTW, were I to do this, it probably would be possible to allow the plugin to filter in multiple ways, not just filtering only those posts created by the current user. If you have suggestions about other filtering that this community would probably want, please share.