I am wanting to set up a discussion forum for a group of tutors that I’m a member of. We currently use Facebook and it’s awful.
These forums are superbly well designed. I’m wondering if the whole thing is custom, or whether @len bought it off the shelf?
Can anyone recommend a way to set up a forum? I have looked but the options I’ve seen are either incredibly complicated, insanely expensive, or really ugly.
It’s definitely a commercial source, because Folksy use the same one.
The forum software
‘Civilized’ lol 
Yep - they’re really easy to work with, too.
Facebook groups are the worst.
I’m in a lot of genealogy groups and it is impossible to find anything older than 7 minutes ago without a million clicks and expanding of comment streams. I wish people would go back to using this kind of threaded forum where you can find and bookmark things so much more quickly.
These threaded forums have worked for decades, but everyone seems so invested in FB, the worst of all possible interfaces. I just don’t get it.
Took some getting used to, but I like TP’s forum software better than the other forums I’ve frequented. Especially the fact that when you reply, it auto links back to the post you’re replying to, eliminating the need for extensive quoting that clutters other forums.
FB isn’t designed to make life easy for you, but designed to keep you “engaged” as long as possible. So, forcing you to dig around is part of the plan.
I can’t stand it when I get a notification for a Facebook post in a group, but when I click the notification, it just takes me to the group and I have no idea where nor when the post they notified me about can be found!
Which is just a long-winded way of saying…I agree!
There’s a few things I don’t like about this software. It’s a pain on mobile, but I don’t use a lot of forums, so it might be better than many.
On the admin side of things, it seems like it could be a little more flexible too. Like custom theming seems to be a pain and setting up rules for threads/posts/users seems to be a challenge.
I was looking to get an ability to be the moderator of my own trip threads so I could dispense the achievements without help, but it seemed either not doable or really complicated.
Formatting is another issue. I’d like to be able to have more colors available.
I do like hidden-mickey-style notifications, though. For a disney forum, I thought it was a cute little inadvertent thing. And the layout is fairly easy to follow.
Exactly! That’s is my biggest hate - trying to find and respond to the comment FB just told me about in a thread of 114 sub-threaded comments. No thank you.
In addition to this forum, I’ve also been using Circle. It’s like a mashup of only the best things about facebook and discourse. And they have an app.
Only on a desktop!!
As a mobile user, I love quotes!! 
Only. Just. Noticed. That 
@Dreamer has her own TR software?? 
Auto reply link works on a tablet too.
yeah it’s a ‘responsive’ feature. Once the screen hits a certain size, the ability goes away.
It’s kinda dumb. It’s also possibly able to be disabled but, again, it’s complicated and not a simple flip-of-the-switch.
Did you just Palapa this discussion?!
I guess it’s not different from saying “only on a desktop” but one can switch from mobile view to desktop view and enable those features.
It does make the page layout a little messy so I never leave it that way, but if I’m trying to figure out what a reply is in response to (and there isn’t a quote), I will often flip to that, see the autolink, and then return to mobile view.
It’s not slick but it works
I do that sometimes if I just can’t figure out what a reply is to, but I agree it’s not a nice format for a mobile screen.
For whatever reason, it no longer works for me. I can switch to desktop site on my phone, but the link to jump to the post doesn’t do anything.
In general, I am finding the software becoming increasingly buggy. I still end up missing tons of posts because the software randomly decides to skip forward to the latest, even if there are dozens (or hundreds!) I haven’t seen yet. (I reported this bug many months ago, but it seems just as bad as always.)