Private Forum for WordPress: Members-Only, Invite or Paid
How to run a private forum on WordPress: make the whole community members-only, gate single spaces, use invites and join requests, or charge for access.
A private forum for WordPress isn’t one setting. It’s three different things that people call by the same name: a whole community that needs sign-in, a single space that only members can read, and a single invite that lets one person through the door. Jetonomy handles all three, and you can mix them on one site.
Decide which kind of private you actually need first, because the setup is quite different for each. Here they are, from widest to narrowest.
Make the whole community members-only
The simplest option is community-wide private mode. Go to Jetonomy, Settings, General and find the Access Control card. Switch it from Public to Private and every community page needs a signed-in account. Guests who open a space, a post, a tag or a profile get sent to the sign-in page, and the REST API turns away unauthenticated requests for community data too. The sign-in, registration and lost-password pages stay reachable so people can still get in.
This is the right choice for a paying-members forum, an internal team board or a coaching group, where nothing should be read by a stranger. The access control docs list exactly which pages stay open.
It’s all-or-nothing, though. If you want a public front door and a private back room, you need the next layer.
Public home, private spaces
Spaces are the rooms of your community, and each one has its own visibility. There are three levels:
| Visibility | Who sees the space | Who reads the posts |
|---|---|---|
| Public | Everyone | Everyone |
| Private | Listed for everyone | Members only |
| Hidden | Not listed | Members only |
Private spaces show up in listings and search with their name and description, so people can find them, but the posts and replies stay behind the door. Non-members see a Join or Request to Join button. That’s useful for a paid area you want people to know exists.
Hidden spaces don’t appear in listings at all. People get in through an invite link, and Jetonomy enforces one rule here: a hidden space must be invite-only. If you pick Hidden, the join policy is locked to Invite Only for you.
One caution, and it matters. Hidden means unlisted, not secret. If a member shares a link to a hidden space, its address can travel with it. Treat Hidden as a way to keep a space out of the menus, not as a vault. If something truly sensitive is going in, think about who gets invited rather than relying on the label.
Public spaces and Private spaces can sit side by side. A common shape is a public Q&A space that brings in search traffic, plus a private space for customers. There’s more on picking the right shape in why the space type matters, and the spaces and categories feature page covers the basics.
Join requests and invite links
Visibility says who can see a space. The join policy says how people get in. There are three policies:
- Open: a signed-in user clicks Join and they’re in.
- Approval required: the user submits a request, and a moderator approves or denies it. Moderators can handle requests from the space’s Members page on the front end, so they don’t need wp-admin.
- Invite only: there’s no Join button. People enter through an invite link.
Invite links are made by a space admin, from the front-end Members page or the space’s edit screen in wp-admin. Each link can have a maximum number of uses and an expiry date, and you can revoke it. A link is effectively a key, so moderators can approve join requests but can’t see or create invite links. That’s deliberate.
Approval suits communities with admission criteria, such as verified customers. Invite links suit cohorts and closed groups. The full breakdown is in the membership and join policies docs.
Charge for access
If the reason for going private is that people pay, you don’t need a second tool to police the door. Jetonomy ships adapters for MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro in the free plugin. You attach an access rule to a space, such as “members on this level”, and people join and leave the space as their membership starts and stops. WooCommerce gating is in Pro, and it works through WooCommerce Memberships or WooCommerce Subscriptions rather than a plain product.
Your membership plugin keeps the checkout and the record of who paid. Jetonomy reads that and turns it into space access. The longer walkthrough lives in the monetization guide, and the membership and monetization feature page lists the free and Pro adapters. Prices and tiers are on the pricing page.
A few setups that work
Three combinations cover most cases. A paid customer forum: Private community mode off, one Private space with an Approval Required or membership-gated policy, and a public Q&A space beside it for search traffic. A closed team board: Private community mode on, everything inside it Open, so staff join with a click. A beta group: one Hidden space, Invite Only, with an invite link that has a use limit and an expiry date.
Try the setup as a brand-new member before you announce it. Sign in with a fresh test account, find the space, request access, and confirm you see what you expect at each step. It takes ten minutes and catches most mistakes.
Moderating a private space
Private doesn’t mean unmoderated. Spaces have their own moderators, separate from site admins, who can pin, close, move and delete posts and review flags within their space. A private space with a lot of members still needs someone looking after it. Newer accounts also start with tighter limits that lift as they build a history, which is covered in the trust levels post.
What private does not mean
A few honest limits, so you don’t promise more than you’ve set up.
Private mode controls what the forum shows. It doesn’t stop a member from copying and pasting what they read. It doesn’t make email notifications private either, since a reply that gets emailed lives in someone’s inbox. And I wouldn’t describe any of this as a compliance guarantee: if you have legal obligations around data, check them separately.
For most private communities, the practical setup is: Private mode if everything is closed, or a public home with Private spaces if only some of it is. Add approval or invite links to control the door, and put a membership plugin behind it if people pay. Start with one space and one door, then add rooms. If you’re setting up the forum itself, the guide to adding a forum to WordPress comes first, and the forum plugin page shows what ships in the box.