Two things: A means for admins. to easily access people's emails/IPs & adding a members-only section
Hi all,
I'll start by explaining I'm NOT a techie (in fact I'm an old dinosaur with dial up
)
1. We'd like a way to be able to access members' emails and IPs on an as-needed basis by at least one admin.
The admins. of our new forum (est. late June) and I are all new to running a forum though most of us know each other and between the 4 of us, we know over half our members, but we do have trouble maker trolls slip in from time to time. Right now we tasked one admin. with the approval of all new members and that admin. also keeps their email address. I've since found that my guess the only time we would ever see the email address is when the person applies for membership.
Since our community is pretty small, it would really help to be able to get the email/IP on an as-needed basis. We're right at a pretty manageable number right now but we're also less than two months old, so we know some of it is luck! We started our board even though two similar boards existed, but both those two are tired old communities, with ancient clunky software run like mini-dictatorships who enjoy banning members for the slightest little infraction or disagreement with their board police so we wanted to avoid that and so far we've done pretty well. But, there are some disgruntled disciples of those other two boards that would like to see us fail. So we need a good way to manage that and identify them since we don't require real names to post. Any tips/help would be appreciated!
2. We'd love to have a private, approved-members only section so we don't have to close the entire board. Right now the admins. make do with the option to make the whole board private; we've used that from time to time when the above-mentioned disgruntled disciples have trashed us on other boards (many of our members belong to all 3 boards which is fine). But I'm sure we're not the only community that would like to stay open/searchable but have a members-only section only accessible by admn. approval.
Anyone who loves ducks and dogs and especially Chesapeake Bay Retrievers is welcome to come check us out at PeakeTalk.lefora.com!
Julie
Admin. & computer moron 
Thanks for this Julie, I will share it with the team and see what we can do.
A members only area would be really nice. Say something that members had to donate to gain access to. This could help offset the upgrade costs and make the members feel a little more welcomed and feel somewhat like a shareholder for lack of better words. A Premium Members area or something along those lines.
Definitely agree with all the suggestions posted.
I also think having this special category or area where only select members specified by the forum admins can view and go in would drive more visits and more participation since some members are hesitant to post publicly and are using the PM system instead.
It also provides 'sort of' a compromise between a public forum and a private forum.
This special private categories does offer lots of flexibility and can be used differently by diff. admins. For example, it can also be used as a private category for admins and mods within the main forum instead of needing to create a private forum just for that purpose besides from the obvious 'premium' category for select members.
I have tested as well as have or have had several different forums, I like Lefora the best. But, this is the one big negative. There should be an option to make categories private or open depending upon the purpose of the category. I would love to take my Lefora Forum public but must remain private to offer some protection to a single category. If this feature could be made available then Lefora would have them all beat hands down. (Of course, a friendlier text editor wouldn't hurt anything. 
lol
Thanks
Arpop
I quite agree - being able to set some topics as public and others as private would be an excellent compromise. On our forum there are many threads we'd happily make public, but a minority of others we want kept private, hence we are a private forum that would like to be a bit more public...
Would be great if you tech wizards at Lefora could incorporate such a concept, as I'm sure there are many other 'Leforums' in the same situation as us...
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