Restricting forums

Is there any way to make a forum, or a group of forums only visible / accessible to certain types of members (like a moderators forum for example)?  Also, is there way to lock a forum so that only administrators can create new topics within it? 

For the first question, the only way is to mark a forum as private, and then restrict access to private forums via membership levels - there's a permission to view private forums.  That's about it.  Anything else would require custom work.

Thanks Nathan, very helpful as usual!

Nathan, what about the Page Access Control module, can't the PAC block viewing based on membership level for a particular page of that forum?  For example, if I want to allow only moderators to be able to view the forum: Dolphin 7.1, wouldn't I simply add the page, http://www.boonex.com/forums/#forum/Dolphin-7-1-0.htm to the PAC and set the membership allowed for viewing to Moderators?

That could work, but it would be very clunky.  You'd have to block the forum URL and all topic URLs.

I think BoonEx uses the default method on here.  Note how there's only one private forum.

Yes, that would be a bit clunky since forum topics are not part of the forum board URL but each have an independent URL. so it wouldn't be a suitable solution.

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I can probably do what I want by just using private forums, doesn't quite give me the functionality I want but I can make do. However your comments have sparked one question (and I might be being stupid here) but what / where is the page access control module?

It's a module that allows more control over access to the site (URLs) for specific membership levels.  You can install it from Administration -> Modules -> Add & Manage.  It can be managed from the Modules menu in the administration panel.

Thanks Nathan - if I'd looked a little more carefully first time round I'd have probably seen it in my modules list!