discourse-closed-topic-gate

Discourse plugin that requires login to view closed topics. Anonymous users (including search crawlers) see a login prompt instead of topic content.

Why

Closed topics often contain stale information - outdated instructions, deprecated features, old troubleshooting steps. By gating them behind login:

• Search engines stop indexing outdated content
• Anonymous visitors are guided toward current resources
• Existing users retain full access to historical discussions

Works with Discourse's auto-close feature (e.g., close topics after 7 days of inactivity) to automatically gate aging content.

Installation

Hosted Discourse (Enterprise)

Contact Discourse support and request installation of:

https://github.com/superfly/discourse-closed-topic-gate

They'll clone the plugin and rebuild your instance.

Self-hosted

SSH into your Discourse instance:

cd /var/www/discourse/plugins
git clone https://github.com/superfly/discourse-closed-topic-gate

cd /var/www/discourse
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake plugin:install_all_gems
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake assets:precompile
sv restart unicorn

Settings

Two settings in Admin → Settings → Plugins:

Setting	Default	Description
closed_topic_gate_enabled	true	Master switch for the plugin
closed_topic_gate_demo_mode	true	When on, only staff see the gate (for testing)

Demo Mode

The plugin installs with demo mode enabled. This lets you verify the gate works without affecting real users:

User Type	Sees Gate?
Staff	Yes (for testing)
Logged-in non-staff	No
Anonymous	No

To test:

1. Log in as staff
2. Visit any closed topic
3. You should see Discourse's login prompt instead of the topic content
4. Open the same URL in incognito - should see normal topic content

Production Mode

Once you've verified the gate works:

1. Go to Admin → Settings → Plugins
2. Set closed_topic_gate_demo_mode to false

Now the behavior flips:

User Type	Sees Gate?
Staff	No
Logged-in	No
Anonymous	Yes

Disabling

Temporarily: Set closed_topic_gate_enabled to false in Admin → Settings. Takes effect immediately, no restart needed.

Permanently: Contact Discourse support to remove the plugin (hosted), or for self-hosted:

rm -rf /var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-closed-topic-gate
cd /var/www/discourse && sv restart unicorn

How It Works

The plugin prepends to Guardian#can_see_topic?, the standard Discourse permission check for topic visibility. When a closed topic is requested by an anonymous user (in production mode), it returns false, triggering Discourse's built-in login prompt.

This gates both the web view and the JSON API uniformly.