Portal and Widgets and making forum's invisible

I have a few, not sure where else to put this.

1. How exactly do you make extra side bars and such? I've noticed how on some sites, there's extra ones that show things like top members, related sites, etc.

2. Is there anyway to make just a specific topic invisible/visible only to certain people? I know you can make a board only visible to admins or whatever but thinking of something more small scale. Perhaps as a unlocked thing.

Please change the title of your topic, that is related to your question/issue, so that other users will be able to find their question/issue using the search engine.

1. Administration Panel > Modules > Portal & Widgets > Forum Widgets
You can use the premade ones and/or create personalized ones.

2. You can not have just one topic that is visible/invisible. You can only do this to forums, categories, navigation links, and widgets.

First Question:
I believe the side bars you're speaking of are 'widgets' which are visible to the right on this forum. To activate these please read the following below;

Admin Control Panel > Modules > Portal & Widgets > Forum Widgets Management

Forum widgets general options

This is where you'll choose the general options for your widgets to be displayed. 'Display forum widgets' set to 'yes' will display the default widgets on the main forum. Below that you will see; 'Width column 1 (left)' and 'Width column 3 (right)' depending on the side you want the widgets to be displayed set one, or both of these to 180px. Below these options will be spaces between widgets and columns, you can modify these to your liking if you don't like the default settings.

Forum widgets management

This is where you'll design the structure of your widgets. Its quite simple, you drag and drop widgets you don't want on your forum to the basket, and widgets you want from 'Existing widgets' or 'Personal widgets' when you're finished editing hit the green 'save' button. You can also create your custom widgets via HTML by clicking the yellow 'Create a widget' button to the left of the basket; these widgets will be stored in personal widgets.

Second Question:
Since you were vague in details for your second question, I'll try to answer it as best I can.

Admin Control Panel > Users & Groups > Groups > Group Administration

Go to 'Create new group' fill in all the fields, then go to 'Group status' and set the group as 'hidden' if you want to hide this group from users. Now;

Admin Control Panel > General > Forum > Categories & Forum

Click the modify() symbol on the forum you want to apply these settings to. Now click 'Permissions' and scroll down to the check boxes. Uncheck 'View and read' and 'Write and reply' for Guests, Members, and any other groups you wish to not view this forum. After that you'll just have to give your hidden group full permission of this forum so they can see/use it. You can also do the same for staff forums and what have you.

for the second question all you can really do is use hide tags

Code:

[hide] [/hide]

It will hide the content from guest and other members, but as soon as a member was to reply to the thread they will then see all content, so is not really a true sufficient way of hiding post content, only until a member replies.

The best way would be to make group, set the groups permissions how you see fit and only add the members to the group of which you want to allow to have access/post etc..

hope that helps a little

Thank you for the wonderful replies, they really helped. I also edited the title a bit so that should hopefully help. Just two more questions

For navigation, how do I link it to specific places with the links? It looks like a bunch of gerbish to mean when I go to it. I..E

 <a href="/">Index</a><br />
 <a href="/memberlist" rel="nofollow">Memberlist</a><br />
 <a href="/profile?mode=editprofile">Profile</a><br />
 <a href="/faq">FAQ</a><br />
 <a href="/search">Search</a><br /></span>

Anyone can explain this in English?

Hello,

Are you trying to create new navigation bars or navigation links to be placed on the widgets?

It's more navigation links.

You could use such a code in a forum widget.

Code:

<a href="http://URL1.com" target="_blank">Title1</a><br>
<a href="http://URL2.com" target="_blank">Title2</a><br>
<a href="http://URL3.com" target="_blank">Title3</a><br>
<a href="http://URL4.com" target="_blank">Title4</a><br>
<a href="http://URL5.com" target="_blank">Title5</a>

That works. Thank you I have no further questions(for now, lol)