Visibility & layers

Forumera lets you control who can see which parts of a forum so that sensitive content stays private while public content remains discoverable.

This page explains how to think about visibility at different levels.

Forum-level visibility

At the top level, a forum can be:

• Public – some or all content is visible to anyone, including non-members.
• Private – most content is only visible to members with the right roles.

This setting shapes how the forum appears on the marketing site and whether search engines can discover public content.

Board- and thread-level visibility

Inside a forum, each board and individual thread can have its own visibility rules. In practice, Forumera exposes a per-thread visibility control in the UI, and forums can also apply rules at higher levels through configuration.

Common patterns include:

• Everyone (including visitors) can read.
• Only members can read; only certain roles can post.
• Only a subset of roles can see and participate.

Admins use visibility controls to:

• Keep sensitive discussions (for example, staff-only boards) private.
• Expose welcoming or onboarding content publicly.
• Separate internal work-in-progress areas from polished, external-facing areas.

Layers and audiences

Some forums use the idea of layers to represent different audiences or access levels. For example:

• A public layer for marketing or onboarding content.
• A member layer for everyday discussion.
• A staff layer for internal coordination.

Tools like layer selectors help admins and moderators understand how content appears from different perspectives and test configurations before rolling them out.

How members experience visibility

From a member's point of view, visibility shows up as:

• Which forums appear on their dashboard.
• Which categories and boards they can see inside a forum.
• Whether specific threads are accessible.

Members only see the content they have permission to see; everything else is either hidden or summarised at a high level, depending on how the forum is configured.