@jmarino:
Well, there’s a plugin to restrict group creation. I’d start there: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-restrict-group-creation/
In the settings, you can auto-demote group creators to mods, so that’s good for what you mention. You can also separately determine who can make a public, private or hidden group. It doesn’t have a setting to restrict somebody who meets the threshold from creating more than one group, though. You’d have to work around that. Also, it has settings like minimum number of days as a member (of your BP site in general) before qualifying to create a group, but nothing built in that’d handle maximum number of days as a mod and then demote automatically.
Honestly? You’re looking for very specific and limited functionality. Since you already plan to manually add any additional mods, I’d consider just getting the necessary info from the user when s/he signs up for VIP membership, manually creating the group in the first place (use the Restrict plugin to keep anybody but a site admin from being able to do so), inviting the VIP member to join, and then setting him/her (and any friends) as mod.
As for the 1 year demotion, I’d just use a good calendar and set up an electronic reminder.
Low tech and not very automated, but that really seems like the route you’ll end up needing to go, unless you (or someone else) wants to create a fair bit of custom code–something you probably won’t find people offering to do for free.
…
Not to be a total downer, but I’m having a bit of trouble imagining what enticement mod status would offer. Maybe I just haven’t toyed with it enough to see its utility in managing forums, but it doesn’t seem to provide much control over the group, at least…
@beckb Thank you for the plugin link and for your very helpful suggestions! I think I can certainly make due with doing things manually for now as you suggested and if the site is successful, I will definitely look into hiring someone to do some custom coding. If anyone reading this would like to offer a quote on such a project, feel free to contact me: jmarino715 (at) gmail (dot) com
As for your comment regarding mod status being an “enticement”, there are a number of benefits to joining my site’s VIP program other than group moderator privileges. It’s difficult to explain it all though without providing specific details or a link to the site which is something I am not prepared to do while the site is still under its current stage of development. I considered taking more drastic measures at the end of the subscription period such as disabling the group’s forum (or the group itself). However, since this is a new site, and there are other more “enticing” benefits that would cease to exist at the end of the subscription period, I figured it would look better to allow all of the groups to remain fully functional regardless if a specific group’s creator is paying their subscription fee or not. Also, before taking such drastic measures, I would need to figure out a way to disable the group/forum without deleting its relevant database entries. This way, if the group creator decides to re-subscribe at a later date, or if someone else would like to take over the payments for the group, they won’t have to start all over again from scratch. Of course, this is an entirely separate issue and I figured I would save this conversation for a later date when I could fully explain it but there you have it since you brought it up. 
restrict group creation can also map to wp_cap/roles – if something is setup for a “vip” level
you can use s2member plugin for this. Create two different levels of users 1. Normal 2. VIP. Then using the url restriction restrict the group creation for users at level 1.
If you want the VIP also to be a free member, check out the “free trial” number of days. I think you can specify 1yr. After one year they wont be able to creat the group
Hope it helps.
@gwu123 You know, I’ve heard that (s2member plugin) mentioned a few times now and not yet bothered to investigate. Will finally do.
As I mentioned earlier, I already looked at the s2Member plugin but I did not see that it had the ability to restrict group creation. However, @gwu123 you have convinced me to give the s2Member a trial run. I’ll keep this thread updated with the results.
@nuprn1 could you perhaps describe the process of how to go about mapping the “restrict group creation” plugin in layman’s terms?
put this /messages/compose/ in URIs That Require Level #0 Or Higher” . This will limit message creation only to Level #0 or higher user. Similar there should be some link for limiting group creation
No experience using it (obviously), but I did just see this plugin that limits the number of groups a user can create.
@jmarino: I am looking for something very similar to this! Essentially I need to be able to define different user roles: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3. And assign different amounts to how many groups they can create. So, Level 1 = 3 groups, Level 2 = 5 groups, Level 3 = 10 groups.
What did you end up doing to resolve your issue?
Hi All
Thank you for sharing. When I wanna try to install “BuddyPress Restrict Group Creation”, I saw this note on top of the page
“This plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.”
Hopefully this plugin still useful.
Other than Buddy Press, not sure if anyone of you try any other plugin that come with Group Control function?
Hope to hear from you soon. Thank you
