I want people to be able to join and leave the group, because they will be joining and leaving many other similar groups in the community. I will then add a email notification plugin so that it becomes an email newsletter with a web archive.
These two combined sound like something that would be useful in general. For example, in facebook groups, only the moderators can send an email to everyone, but anyone can join a group and chat in the group forum.
i could use a plugin that allows only admins to email all group members, but then the forum is not a record of all previous announcements, its just people chatting.
I don’t have this exact issue, but did have a problem when it came to creating a sticky topic in the forums with basic rules and a note about how to report trolls, etc. I was trying to do it through a “Administrative” group where people could see the members and forum posts, but not be able to join and contribute on their own. The idea was that it was a staff group who could be messaged individually if there were site problems, and who could create forum topics or notes without others being able to do the same.
Basically, the only way you can ensure that people see content from a group is to leave it wide open. It would be nice to have an option in between like you suggest — read, but not write. A group where the content is public but joining is invite-only.
I would love to know if there’s a solution, but don’t really expect to see one in the core any time soon.
Take a look into the bp-group-blog plugin;
it allows user rights independantly of wp
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=buddypress+groupblog
I’ve decided it’s easy to do. You just create a public group and add a little check box which ‘make this an announcement only group’ then add that data to group meta. Then for groups where that is checked, remove the activity stream input box and the forum post box. now it is just a matter of finding the proper do_action hooks to make it happen. Or more klunkly and less secure – just hide those things with CSS. I’ll have a simple plugin done by the end of the (long) day hopefully. 
The buddypress code, while complex, is very well documented and written so it is not so hard to figure out. Kudos to the excellent developers!
I’ll check out the group blog plugin again. i was going to use it anyway for certain groups, thanks.
i’ve finished the plugin, if anyone is interested, let me know.
basically is allows you to set certain groups to be announce-only. In those groups members can join but only mods and admins can post. pretty simple.
I’d be interested in the plugin, Dwenaus.
Put it up on the wordpress repo with the appropriate tags
I was thinking of making a plugin that would create forums in ways that don’t require group creation/membership…perhaps this is something that shares similar functions to your plugin.
hey all, the plugin can be downloaded at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-announce-group/ (once they approve it)
but for the time being it can be found at http://bluemandala.com/plugins/bp-announce-group.zip
it is pretty straight forward and can work with public groups, private or even hidden groups. Basically it make is to that only admins and moderators can add content. Regular members can join the group but can’t add any content.
@Dwenaus, very nice. Will be checking it out. Thank you.
@Dwenaus, Thank you, that was something I was looking for.
Actually my goal is to have functionality as lautering described: “It would be nice to have an option in between like you suggest — read, but not write. A group where the content is public but joining is invite-only.” Unfortunatelly I’m not a skilled BP programmer, but if somebody could give me an advice how to start, I’d appreciate it a lot.
@myqolik and @lautering – I believe my plugin does what you need. You mention wanting to enable people to read the content without joining the group – If you use my plugin then this is possible. When you set the group to Announcement-only, then ONLY admins and moderators can add content. The group can be public, private or even hidden. And for a public group, it doesn’t matter if the members join or don’t join, they still can’t add any content. So it really doesn’t matter if they join or don’t they still can’t write a thing. The benefit of joining the announcement group is that with email notifications plugin, you can turn that group into a email newsletter.
Does that match what you are looking for?
@Dwenaus, thank for your answer. Yea, I understand, I can use your plugin for my needs. The only thing is, that I’d like to implement a comunity system for readers of a web magazine. There should be a group (or maybe groups) of specific members like editors of that magazine. They will use this group for their communication and posting updates about their activity. This activity and communication should be visible for all members of that community system, but it would be not good when all members would have opportunity to join group which will be called like ‘editors’, Thats way.
this plugin has been updated to fix folder structure. also, the forum is now called ‘announcements’ for any announce groups. enjoy
