Discourse usage

Discourse overview

Discourse can be used on laptops and tablets, in phone browsers and using a phone app. You can also use Discourse by email; note that any mails you send must come from the email address listed in your MT account. Discourse does include standard accessibility features, but this has not been verified - let us know; if there are any accessibility issues we will contact the developers and ask for help or improvements.

You can automatically see all the Freegle volunteer discussion forums - you do not need to join each one. Each forum is called a group and you can choose which ones to follow. In Discourse jargon each new message is called a topic and you can reply to the topic; topics and replies are called posts. (Discourse does also have teams of users, but we're using these very sparingly.) Discourse doesn't have a separate Files section; at the moment anyone can upload images into messages and "staff" can upload PDFs; this can be changed if needed.

Like most forums, each group has a series of topics - and replies to the topics. A topic can also include a poll. Note that you can "like" a topic or reply. And you can "bookmark" posts of interest, and "flag a post" for the attention of the moderators.

Quick tips

• You can receive notifications of new topics and replies in various ways
• You can configure what is shown on the home page in Preferences+Interface
• If you have the Discourse site open, it will update automatically if there are new posts eg with (2) in the title.

How to pages

• Signing in
• How to create new topics and polls
• Menus, preferences and notifications
• Discourse using email
• Discourse app for phones and tablets