I cannot connect a private/hidden forum to a group. I even tried creating a new (hidden) group, specified that it has a forum. The forum gets created and is assigned to the group through wp-admin. But if I browse to the forum tab in Buddypress, it says the group does not have a forum. The only way i can get a forum to work is if i make it public.

[@donalconlon Participant 9 years, 8 months ago]

Actually, it won’t even show if i make the forum private. The forum has to be public for me to see it.

[@danbp Participant 9 years, 8 months ago]

Please don’t double post.

If you activated Groups in BP, you assigned also a page to the group component.

If you use bbPress, you have to create a group form.
dashboard > forum > new forum and call it group forum.
In the right column, there is a setting box for forum type. Assign category.

In forum settings, check activate group forums for BP and choose group forum parent page.

Now on front-end create a group and follow the steps. Make it hidden or whatever. Save after each step.

Allow group forum. And save. Now the tricky part.

You have to resave this step, because BP registers first the group. As now forum is active, you have to select the newly create group name in the select box above the option yes, i want a group forum.

For already existing groups, it the same thing to do. The forum tab is existing, but nothing shows on it because of this.
Go to group settings, and select the group name and save.

In brief, you create the forum, save, assign the group name to the forum and re-save.

This was already explained to you on another topic and is also explained on the mentionned codex page.

Topic closed and discussion continue there.