---
title: Managing forum security
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k82/managing-users/configuring-permissions.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

The security model of Forums has two parts:

- Security of the Forums application administration interface.
- Security of the forums published on the website.

## Forums administration interface

You can manage access to the Forums administration interface in the **Modules -> Forums** permission matrix in the **Permissions** application:

- **Modify** - allows users to modify forum settings.
- **Read** - allows users to only read forum settings.

Users without any permissions who are moderators of at least one forum are allowed to access the **Posts waiting for my approval** dialog only.

## Security of forums published on a website

If you edit a forum and switch to its **Security** tab, you can see a permission matrix. Columns of the matrix represent the following actions:

- **Access to forum** - defines who can enter the forum and view posts.
- **Attach files** - defines who can attach files to forum posts.
- **Mark as answer** - defines who can mark posts as answers in Question - Answer forums.
- **Post** - defines who can add posts to the forum.
- **Reply** - defines who can reply to forum posts.
- **Subscribe** - defines who can subscribe for receiving notifications about new posts in the forum.

Rows in the top part of the matrix have the following meanings:

- **Nobody** - the action cannot be performed by anyone.
- **All users** - anybody can perform the action.
- **Authenticated users** - only signed-in registered users can perform the action.
- **Authorized roles** - only members of roles specified in the lower part of the matrix can perform the action.

Below the permission matrix, there is one more check-box:

**Allow user to change their name** - if checked, users can change their name displayed with a forum post when entering the post; if unchecked, their user name will be used.

The following properties of the Forum group web part are also related to forum security:

- **Hide forum to unauthorized users** - indicates whether forums for which the user has no permissions are visible for them in the list of forums in a forum group.
- **Redirect unauthorized users** - determines whether to redirect unauthorized users to the logon page or whether to display only an info message.
- **Access denied page URL** - URL where the user is redirected when trying to access a forum for which they are not authorized.