Remove Blogs For Most Member Statuses

Hi there, Everyone:

I am brand new to Dolphin, so I apologize if what I am asking has already been covered, or is impossible, or is just plain stupid :)

I want only CERTAIN membership levels to be able to blog (namely, just the administrators).

I want to hide the whole blog TAB in the profile pages of the members who aren't allowed to post blogs.

Basically, I want the majority of people on my site to be able to read and comment upon the articles that WE write, find and comment upon OUR blog, and let them have a SMALL space to comment (something like a facebook wall page), and let them make friends / meet singles.

Maybe this is all backwards. I think that basically I would like to have something SIMILAR to a Wordpress site around a particular topic with the ability for members to comment upon the articles WE write, have a small wall for them to write what they want about themselves, and allow them to hook up with other members.

am I going about this the right way? Should I be using a CMS other than Dolphin for this?

Thanks in advance.

To restrict who can post blogs make a Administrator Membership Level at Admin>Settings>Membership Levels>Create, then adjust the permissions at Admin>Settings>Membership Levels>Levels>Actions for each level so that Admins can post but no one else can. 

As far as removing blog tabs from profiles by membership level, there's no control for that (that I know of) but you can remove the blog tab from all of the profiles by going to Admin>Builders>Navigation Menu and find My Profile where you'll click onProfile Blog - there you can deselect the 'visible for' visitors & members. Then go wayyyyy over to the right to find the Profile View header and click on Profile Blog there and do it again.

Then you have no access to "My Blogs" for your members and only the Admins to post, and only the Admins will show up in all of the "recent blog" spots on the Homepage, etc.. If you want a more easily accessible link from admin profiles now that you've removed the menu links, you can just put it in the Description section of the Admin profiles.

There's probably a way to do the coding to leave the Admin Blogs on the submenus, but someone else will have to answer that question.

Thank You for the reply, ggsinc:

My other question is once I remove the ability to blog for most member ship levels, will they still be able to write about themselves, similar to how a person can make a wall update on a Facebook page?

will I need a third party module?

Thanks again.

You'll control where they can post elsewhere on the site in much the same way, using the Membership Level permissions. Removing the permissions for blogs doesn't affect their ability to do other things like post on their profile or in the forums or post pics. Each of these things have their own control (peep the long list of user permissions to see exactly what level of control you have over what your members can and can't do). However, the default Spywall only posts activity, it isn't something that users can post directly to, I have a paid mod installed on my site for the Spywall to make it more interactive like Facebook's wall. 

Thanks again, ggsinc.

Your instructions were clear and helpful.