Jared Atchison

This plugin is for bbPress 2.x
Many people who run forums would like to know when a new topic (thread) has been posted but do not have the time to constantly check their forum for activity. This solves that!
This plugin will send an e-mail notification to specific addresses when a new topic has been posted. The users who receive notification along with a simple e-mail template is configured in the bbPress settings.
See the <a href="http://www.jaredatchison.com/2011/08/28/bbpress-new-topic-notifications/" rel="nofollow ugc">author website</a>.

bbPress New Topic Notifications

Send notification emails to specific users when a new bbPress topic is posted.

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

bbPress New Topic Notifications vs Private groups