Robin W

An add-on to the bbPress forum plugin – creates private forum groups
This Plugin creates unlimited private forum groups.
Forums are then allocated to one or more groups, and users allocated to one or more groups.
What this achieves 
unlimited private groups 
Each user is set to a group or groups, and each forum can have any or all the groups associated with it 
Any number of public forums combined with any number of group forums. The group forums can be individually set to public or private. 
Forum title and description (but not topics or replies) can be set to be visible to non-group users, allowing people to see that a forum exists but not access it 
Separate pages can be set to allow redirection of non group users for sign-up or information 
Topic Permissions 
Topic Permissions is designed for sites where users need to have different permissions to different forums. 
For instance the ability for users to contribute to one forum whilst only being able to view another, or only start topics in one forum, or only reply to topics in another.
Example
So if 
User a belongs to group 1 
User b belongs to group 2 
User c belongs to group 3
and 
Forum x is set to allow group 2 
Forum y is set to allow group 2 and group 3 
Forum z is set to allow group 1 and group 3
Then 
User a can access only forum z 
User b can access forum x and forum y 
User c can access forum y and forum z
Restrictions/warnings
The widgets (bbpress) forums list, (bbpress) recent replies, and (bbpress) recent topics SHOULD NOT BE USED, as they will show topics headings and author names for all forums. Replacement widgets called (private groups) forums list, (private groups) recent replies, and (private groups) recent topics are available instead
Works with bbpress 2.5.3 or higher

Private groups

After wasting hours trying to get Skyverge's WooCommerce Memberships to do what I needed (no practical way to protect topics), I tried this and had it doing everything I needed in under 15 minutes.

Setup a group, manually assigned users to that group.
Set the forum to private and assigned that that group to it.
Viola, everything worked exactly as I wanted.

Public doesn't even see the forum exists. Group members can when logged in.  Non-members can't go directly to to topic URL and bypass the protection.

Only suggestions would be:
1. cleanup the settings pages and instructions, they're a bit overly complicated and hard to follow. 
2. some way to trigger group membership programmatically based on a WooCommerce purchase (I know, to specific and I'll probably code it myself for what I need).

Thanks again for an awesome bbp plugin!

Easy setup and protected forums exactly as I needed

For bbPress - Creates private forum groups

Iceable

BBP Close Old Topics is a bbPress extension to close old topics automatically when they are older than an admin-defined period of time, from one week to one year.
The period of time you set is compared to the topic freshness (usually based on the date of the last reply) to determine if a topic should be closed.
Old topics can be “soft-closed” on the fly only, or actually closed in the database.
Settings are in Settings > Forums, under “Forum Features”.
If you choose to only soft-close old topics on the fly, they will only appear closed as long as the plugin is active, but you will find them still open if you disable it.
If you check the “Hard close” option, every topic that gets closed on the fly will also be effectively closed in the database. In this case they will remain closed even if you disable this plugin.
This plugin only works with bbPress 2.2 or later. It will not have any effect if bbPress is not installed and activated, and will not work correctly with any version older than 2.2. This plugin was tested with bbPress up to 2.5.14.
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<ol>
<li>Visit ‘Settings > Forums’ and set the settings in the “Forum Features” section.</li>
<li>Check the “Close Old Topics” box to enable this feature, and set how old posts should be before closing them (1 year by default).</li>
<li>Optionally check the “Hard Close Old Topics” if you want topics to be actually closed in the database.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Credits</h3>
Some parts of the code of this plugin were inspired by the work of Brandon Allen: https://github.com/thebrandonallen/bbp-auto-close-topics
<h3>Translations</h3>
<ul>
<li>English – default</li>
</ul>
*Note: This plugin is fully translation-ready. Please contribute your language to the plugin to make it even more useful for all users worldwide! For translating you can use the <a href="http://www.poedit.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">“Poedit Editor”</a> or contribute directly on <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/bbp-close-old-topics" rel="nofollow ugc">translate.wordpress.org</a>

BBP Close Old Topics

This plugin helps me to automate some procedures

Do whatever it says!

Does what it claims

Extension for bbPress to close old topics automatically when they are older than an admin-defined period of time.

Private groups vs BBP Close Old Topics