Camen Design Forum

NFF Feature Request: Private

append delete NickPfen

A need for the business I work at is to have a private forum among employees, ONLY. However, I see that NNF does not cater to that, which is fine, and here is an official request for an option to make private :)

By private, I mean that people who go to the forum link are met with a login screen before viewing any content.

I know at one time the moderators and members were close to implementing a private option: http://forum.camendesign.com/your_ideas_suggestions_for_an_nnf_access-limitation_feature_http_auth_ , but I believe nothing came about.

What are your thoughts? If this happens, would there be a wide use for this option?

NickPfen added on

Dang! the title should be "NNF..." and not "NFF..." opps! Maybe a request for an option to append the title :)

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append delete #1. Kroc

NNF cannot by itself make a forum truly private because it cannot protect the RSS feeds from being read directly, you have to use htpasswd.

You can make a whole forum private blocked by a login screen by implementing htpasswd. I'm already doing this for a sub-forum on another NNF install elsewhere.

append delete #2. NickPfen

When you implement htpasswd on the install that you are doing, will you update NNF's code here to make that an option?

NickPfen added on

After searching around on the web, is implementing htpasswd as simple as the instructions in this link: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/password/

I know it won't be truly private because of RSS (or is there a workaround), but it's unlikely (at least in our case) that someone is going to pick up on our RSS feed.

NickPfen added on

“NNF cannot by itself make a forum truly private because it cannot protect the RSS feeds from being read directly, you have to use htpasswd.”

So you are saying there is a way to use htpasswd to protect the RSS?

append delete #3. Kroc

Eh? You're not quite understanding.
NNF's code can only protect PHP files, it cannot prevent anybody typing in a URL to other files and downloading them, including all your RSS files with their content. NNF _used_ to have a "private" forum type that required login, but I removed it because it created a false sense of security.

Htpasswd means that *no* file can be accessed from a folder / sub-folder unless a correct name / password is provided. This will make the forum properly private.

Htpasswd works using two things:

1. A few lines in the .htaccess file to determine that the folder is to be protected, and the location to the htpasswd file. Because the location to the hpasswd file has to be *absolute*, I cannot include htpasswd code in NNFs htaccess

2. A htpasswd file which is a simple list of names and their passwords that are allowed access. For use with NNF you will have to register your hidden users both in NNF and then again in the htpasswd file. Whilst NNF is case-insensitive and UTF-8 aware, htpasswd is not.

Again to note, I cannot provide a private forum feature in NNF because it requires specific work on your part to configure the server correctly.

Hope this helps.

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