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There is a hack for newbb (NOT for newbb2) which allows you to have private forums that only certain groups can see. So you do have to create multiple groups and assign specific users to them, in order to control people's access, but by configuring the forum system to only display certain forums to certain groups, you achieve true private forums.
I discovered just now that the hack is currently not available for download anywhere, it seems. So I've put it up on the Freeform Solutions web server. You can get a copy here:
http://www.freeformsolutions.ca/h_x2-0-6_mod_newbb.zipNote there is a file in there called hack.html which is rudimentary documentation about the hack. (There is a Japanese version of that file too.)
There are some modifications to this hack that you might want to consider. In the admin/admin_priv_forums.php file, you may want to remove the 100 pixel restriction on the width of the list of groups (long group names cannot be read otherwise). Remove the following text around line 423:
style="width: 100px;"
And you may wish to change the default posting permission to Can Post (by default groups that you give permission to access a private forum still cannot post there!). To allow groups that you give access to a private forum to also be able to post there by default, change the 0 to a 1 in this code, around line 129:
This:
VALUES ($forum, $curr_groupid, 0)";
becomes this:
VALUES ($forum, $curr_groupid, 1)";
Hope this is useful to you (or someone). Take it easy,
--Julian