To help people become more comfortable and fluid with the FLRC Forum, we’ve developed this FAQ. We’ll be posting each of these as individual topics here in the Site Help & Comments forum, and you can read the entire FLRC Forum FAQ in Google Docs.
What we call the “FLRC Forum” is a Web-based discussion system that uses the Discourse software. At the top level are forums—also called categories in the interface—which are groups dedicated to particular subjects like FLRC announcements, workouts, injuries, running news, and more. Within a particular forum are specific topics, which other systems might call “threads” or “conversations.” A topic comprises a collection of posts, which are individual messages related to the first post. Posts can include text with formatting, links, images, videos, and even simple polls.
Most forums are public and can be read by anyone, but we also have private forums that the FLRC Board of Directors, board committees, and race directors rely on to coordinate the administration of the club. You can see those only if you’ve been added to the appropriate group.
You can also send private messages directly to other users. Apart from the specified recipients, no one, even the forum administrators, can read those messages. This privacy-protecting feature lets everyone on the forum have private discussions without sharing email addresses.
Discourse works well in both desktop Web browsers and mobile browsers. However, if you prefer an app experience on your smartphone, there are several options. The makers of Discourse itself have created DiscourseHub for iOS and DiscourseHub for Android. For a slightly different interface and support for notifications of new posts, check out Fig for iOS.