To cover access to blogs in the back office: on the 'Blog settings' tab use the 'user permissions' subtab to set up permissions for each blogger, then on the 'group permissions' don't give any group any permissions.

To hide blogs from non-registered people who are not members of a specific blog simply make your posts in that blog be 'protected' instead of 'published'.

Thanks EdB but I'm afraid I don't follow you. Before posting my question here I did what you mentioned in the Blog Settings tab for the users. I've turned the account "demouser" to "Not a Member" and he's listed in the group "Basic User" for every page. However he can still sign in and see every page! I don't know what I'm missing here... there's got to be a way to have Blog A open to anyone who hits the site, Blog B open to all registered users, and Blog C to select users only, right?

On the second part to your answer, where do I change the blog to "protected" instead of "published?"

Changing the user to not a member when the group the user is in IS a member will make the user be a member again. So on each blog on the blog settings tab click the group permissions subtab and uncheck everything for every group except admin. That way no group is a member or has any permissions in any blog. In other words "demouser" gets the permissions of the "Basic User" group. Now go to each blog's user permissions tab to decide which individual blog and control permissions on a person by person basis.

When you write a post, or when you edit a post, one of the options in the sidebar is "visibility". There you will see published and protected and draft and private and deprecated, and that's where you change what visitors to the site can see.

Still no luck! I did as you said, and "demouser" and an unregistered visitor can all see everything. Is there a way to block the blog to all visitors (everyone who isn't signed in)?

this is confusing, but should be easy to fix. you have to go into "blog settings" under the main admin. there pick user settings, and you must set the user settings for each blog...setting some as members, admins and others as not a member.

from there, you need to login and test it with a non-admin account. remember, your account will always show all forums.

I've been trying that adriscoll but to no success. I'm using the "demouser" account that comes with b2 but he can still see everything... his account has NO user permissions on any of my three blogs, and on all three blogs only Admin has rights under "group permissions."

I know I'm missing something, so I'll keep diggin!

i don't know if this is the linchpin, but i created separate user groups for each blog. i was stuck the same way you are, but when i added this extra layer of definition, and placed users in groups, and groups in certain blogs...it seemed to fix everything.

have you tried that yet?

Just tried it, no luck! No matter what I do, ANYONE can see ANY page in my blog!! Man this is mind boggling, I don't understand why I can't get this to work...

justabaldguy, if you want to set me up as a user or give me a link to your blog i would be happy to poke around

The blog is at [removed by author] if you want to look around. Can you look w/o an account? I can create one for you but would it need to be an admin account?

I want to set it so that anyone can see the blogs "Home" and "Linky" but have another one that's hidden for registered users. I can't get it to work though.

You are confusing the public side and the private side!!!

The ONLY way to stop unregistered VISITORS from seeing the PUBLIC side of the blog is to make a post "protected" or "private". Permissions have nothing to do with seeing the PUBLIC side.

Adding groups has nothing to do with what someone sees in the back office - the PRIVATE side of the blog. DO NOT GIVE ANY GROUP permissions on the group settings tab, and give each individual user permissions on the USER PERMISSIONS tab for each blog on the Blog settings tab.

Thanks EdB. When I pull up the blog, there are 3 links (blogs) at the top of the page. I was wanting to have 2 blogs open for anyone to see and one hidden that only registered users could access. This may not be possible, I know I can't find a way to do it. I'll work around it though and just restrict the general access for now.

I was not confusing the public and private side. I'm not giving anyone access to the back office. When I said anyone can see any page on my blog that's not entirely correct; no one but me can see the back office. But any user, registered or otherwise, can hit my index page and click the blogs linked at the top and see all those blogs. I don't want this, but since I haven't been able to find a way to stop it I'll find a workaround for now.

Ah okay. The link to a blog is not hidden from certain people in any 'stock' way. The contents of the blog can be hidden, meaning unregistered visitors will see an empty blog, but they'll see the link to the empty blog.

I think I just now saw a hack that claims to allow this so check the top of the plugins and hacks forum. http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=11814 I think is the one?

Anyway people can see a link to a blog but not the posts in the blog is the only stock method. It'd be a cool feature though: "hide the blog link from everyone except members of group (pick groups)".

Hopefully the hack will serve your needs!

Looks like that will work. I figure for now I can remove the other blogs from the list, and do the publish as protected only so only members will see the posts on the second blog page.

Thanks for all your help EdB, sorry for double posting on this topic yesterday.

No prob. I think, heck I'm pretty sure you can go into the Blog settings for the blog you want as a private blog and uncheck the box that allows members to post 'published'. That'd be on the 'user permissions' subtab. That way there won't be any oopsies where someone posts a "visible to the world" post.