How to “friend” your friends on our new system in discourse

Discourse, our new system, doesn’t have a friending as a “core feature” in quite the way Ning did. There’s still a way of making friends and keep track of them, though. However there are several workarounds the best works inside Discourse:

Here’s how:
Find your friend in the Members’ directory, click on their name and send them a message. When messages from your friends pile up in your inbox, archive them for later. Before long, you’ll have an archive full of friends. OK, not them, their messages.

Here are the detailed instructions if you need them:
Friending in Discourse (the best):

Click on the member’s (user’s) avatar this will take you to their profile
In the upper righthand corner there will be a Blue Box that says “Message”
Click on it
Enter subject: “friend request” - friends name
Enter your message (the first message must be at least 20 characters)
In the lower left hand corner click on the blue box “message” This will send your request and message
You will receive a notification of all replies
As you build your list of “conversations” you may want to archive them to keep them from building up in your inbox. To do this:
Click on your avatar Then click on the envelope in the middle. This will take you to your messages
Click on “sent”
Click on the message you want to archive
On the bottom will be three choices: “invite” “Archive” “reply”
Click “Archive” this will save your conversation. To go back to it just click on the envelope under your avatar and choose archive in your message menu. All your friend request will be listed Choose the one you want to communicate with.
Method 2 (offline:)

Open your friends profile by clicking on their screen name
Click on bookmark or favorite (depending on your browser)
Create a new bookmark folder named “XXXXCommunity Friends” and move the bookmark into it
You will have a list of your friends and the ability to go directly to their profile to exchange messages. You will get notifications of replies or messages to you. The advantage of this is you can go directly to their profile and message without first logging into Discourse.

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