Could lemmy be used as a private self hosted forum?

And could lemmy be used as a private forum were only registered users and whitelisted users can view, post and comment on the instance. This way you can have a private instance which only paid users of your group or club can join like many membership website forums have.

  • nutomicA
    17·
    4 years ago

    Private communities are not implemented yet, but are on the roadmap.

    • Wala WalasOP
      4·
      4 years ago

      Please share a github link to the private communities feature.

      But it is possible to have a private instance were the instance cannot have contact to the federation or only allow selected users from the federation to view the instance?

      • AgreeableLandscape
        3·
        4 years ago

        But it is possible to have a private instance were the instance cannot have contact to the federation or only allow selected users from the federation to view the instance?

        Yes. Simply have the following in your configuration JSON file:

        # [other configuration stuff]
federation: {
    enabled: false,
    # [other configuration stuff]
        • Wala WalasOP
          2·
          4 years ago

          Is it possible to not have your instance federated but allow a whitelist of users to access the instsnce from outside the instance?

          • nutomicA
            1·
            3 years ago

            You can allow/block access by instance, but not by user.

  • Hizeh@hizeh.com
    8·
    2 years ago

    There is a BB forum frontend for Lemmy that replicates that phpBB forum style. Saw it mentioned in a few comments.

  • AgreeableLandscape
    5·
    4 years ago

    And could lemmy be used as a private forum were only registered users and whitelisted users can view, post and comment on the instance.

    There’s no limited registration or account approval features yet, but you can close the registration completely or open it at any time if you’re an administrator. Anyone can still view the content though.

    • Wala WalasOP
      2·
      4 years ago

      I could have an instance were registration is completely disables and only have the admin being able to create accounts?

      • AgreeableLandscape
        3·
        4 years ago

        In theory yes, by disabling registration in the server settings and then directly modifying the database. It’s by no means user friendly though. You’ll need to know PostgreSQL, as well as how the Lemmy backend structures the actual database tables. You’ll also have to manually hash passwords, at least for when creating the account, once the user is logged in, they can change it to their own password which will go through Lemmy’s own hash system (or rather, the authentication library that Lemmy uses).

        • Wala WalasOP
          1·
          4 years ago

          Is there a library or command for registering an account on lemmy which can be used to register an account on an private instance? Lets say you payed to be in tier 2 of a group and tier 2 allows for a account on their private lemmy instance. Can it be setup so only paid users in tier 2 can have a lemmy account?

            • nutomicA
              2·
              3 years ago

              Also through the API, just block the register endpoint so users cant register themselves. And you’d have to block registration over websocket, not sure how that works.

  • willya@lemmyf.uk
    1·
    2 years ago

    There’s a phpbb forum front end you can use. Having it private yet federated doesn’t make any sense though, but yes you can use it completely on its own with federation turned off.