• Lesson Index:
• Overview
• Installation
• Admin Panel
• User Rank
• User Registration
• Admin Email
• COPPA Regulation
• User Admin
• Adding Forums
• Member-Only Forums
• Moderators
• Disable Forum
• Backup Database
• Admin Password
• Upgrades
• phpBB Skins

Moderators and Groups:

Moderators help maintenance of the forums. They have more privileges than regular members. But do not have all the power of an administrator.

To create a group of Moderators, go to Group Admin -> Management in the Admin Panel and click Create a New Group. Then set as shown...

We set the admin user as the "Group moderator". That means the admin is that one that can add or remove member to the Moderators group.

Set as a closed group. This means that the users can see who the moderators are. But they can not request to be added to the group.

Group Permissions

To view or edit the permissions of the Moderators groups. Select the group as shown...

Here you can see that I have given the group Moderators moderator-status to manage the Photoshop forum.

Typically, you will want to give your Moderators group sitewide moderator-status to manage all the forums. Then if you want to have a user have site-wide moderator privileges, you would add the user to the Moderators group. If you want an user to have moderator privileges only to particular forums, then you would not add the user to the Moderators group; but would set the user permissions in the User Admin -> Permissions screen as discussed here.

Hence there are two sets of permissions: group permissions and individual permissions.

What does moderator privileges mean? It means that when they are in the main forum, they can delete, move, lock, and split topics.

Adding User To Groups

So far only the admin user is a member of the Moderators group. To add users to a group, you do not do it through the Admin Panel at http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/admin. Instead, the group moderator (admin in our case) should log in through the general forum at http://www.yourdomain/forums

After logging in, click User Group link at the upper left. Then select the Group and click View. You will see the details of the group.

Now you see that you can add users to the group.

Removing Users

You remove users by using the same screen...

You can also change the group type in the same screen. We will learn what that is next.

Listing the group members

Because this Moderators group was set up as a Closed Group, anyone (including non-registered users) can see who are the members of a group by clicking usergroups link at the top header menu.

If you do not want the members to be revealed, then the moderator of the group needs to change the group type to Hidden. The difference between Closed and Open group type is that in an Open type, any user can request to be added to a group.

Unsubscribe From Group

A member of a group, can remove himself or herself by logging into the main forums click usergroups link and click unsubscribe button as shown below.

Go to Next Lesson to learn how to disable forum.