Hi I have been looking around the forum to see how it works and I must admit that I'm both amazed by the functionality and simplicity.
The simple but moderm forum display is what makes this one even great. I am looking to run it for my community website.
However, to control influx of users and for the goals of the community I'm building, I want users to be able to sign up only through invitation by/from existing users. Is this feature presented?.. if not is it possible to implement? is it in the pipeline or should I pull down my expectations?
I have seen that many modest forums use this method (like lobste.rs and tildes) and it helps in keeping the engagement aligned with the forum's goal.
The idea is that anyone can view the website, only #registered users can post/comment/like or engage on the website...but unregistered users will need an invite code (or URL) from already registered member in order to sign up.
There's no "invite only" feature in Misago, and its unlikely it will ever land in the core. However in future releases we may add plugin hooks that will let one implement a plugin that would implement this functionality.
As an alternative, you may enable admin activation of new accounts and have users let you know their username so you can activate them after they register.
How are entries displayed in the front page? I mean, I can see that they are sorted by latest threads appearing first. In a forum with too many users posting I think there would be content-fatigue if all post appear in the home index.
In that case are there sorting options or plans for it in the (near) future. For example, I can choose to only see posts from users or categories I follow, or those that are trending (more replies), etc.
In regard to that, how does the "follow" and "unfollow" feature work for users. Does it implement the same idea or it's just for notification (similar as "watching" on threads).
Sorry I asked much!
Thanks for your understanding!
Misago is doing same thing that Discourse and Flarum does and it was proven to work on some very large forums. Unless you have hundreds of users posting daily, which already puts you in the 0.00000001% of internet forums, threads list is not confusing for your members.
Alternatively, you can switch index page with categories list, like it is on classic forums.
You can filter this list to only see some of those threads. In next Misago feature release plugins will be able to include custom filters.
It adds or removes user to the list of users you are following. You can limit new private threads invitations to only to the users you are following. Maybe in future I will use this for more extra features, but for now this is it.
I have misago behind caddy2 backed by authelia authentication. Caddy is configured to allow anyone to view the site. Misago is configured with no user enrol allowed, but with Oauth log in enabled. Everything (lldap, authelia, misago) is backed by a single postgres container based database server, with individual databases and database users within the instance.
I have a public contact form* where prospective users (or existing users with technical support queries where they cannot access the forum for whatever reason) can email my forum admin account with the contact form request.
Then if I want to grant them membership of the forum I add their username and email address for authentication details in my ldap backend and add them to the 'misago' group (which I create, and is the group that valid authentication for the forum is checked). I then email them details of how to log in to the authentication frontend, and set their password (and register an authenticator as I require 2FA).
When they register with the authentication frontend, they can then "sign in" to misago using the authentication provided externally, and misago will create a membership based on their provided username and email address.
This also allows for the possibility that you can add or remove people to the 'misago' group in the lldap backend, and also revoke all current logins (clearing the redis cache in the authelia container setup) independent of misago.
Sounds complicated, but it's not when you get it set up. Such is the nature of levels of access and authentication for secure web services!
* I use nocodb to self host my contact form (also utilising the same postgres instance). It's relatively simple and lightweight to host using a container (I use podman) setup that you can also use for misago itself (and authelia and caddy). You might wish to refer to install-misago-in-a-podman-pod-under-linux/ for an example of how to install a customised container environment. Any self hosted or external provider contact form will do though.
I'm travelling for a few days, but generally would be happy to add some devil in the detail if anyone wants to look at this as a possible solution.
