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Textile Community directory
Start a Board

A beginner’s guide

Follow the thread.

Textile is software for independent communities. Each community has a home of its own; inside, people gather around subjects, start conversations, and reply to one another.

From the whole fabric to a single thread

PlatformBoard / InstanceForumThreadPost

Imagine a community called The Mending Circle. Here’s where one conversation would live:

  1. Platform

    Textile

    The software that makes these communities possible. This master site is its front door: a directory to help you find Boards, plus information about using and running Textile.

  2. Board/Instance Each instance contains just one board.

    The Mending Circle

    A whole community website, with its own address, members, rules, and Forums. One installation of Textile runs one Board, so “Board” and “instance” refer to the same community here.

  3. Category

    Casual

    All forums are grouped by category. This is a standard implementation in classic forums.

  4. Forum

    Sewing room

    A place within a Board for a particular subject. A Board might have Forums for introductions, questions, and projects. Owners can group related Forums into categories to keep the index tidy.

  5. Thread

    “How do I mend a denim jacket?”

    One conversation inside a Forum. A thread has a title and brings all the replies about that topic together.

  6. Post

    “Try a small patch on the inside.”

    A single message in a thread. The opening message is a post, and each reply is another post, with its own author and time.

A separate home, a separate account. Register on each Board you want to participate in. An account on Textile Support does not automatically sign you into another Board.

Join your first conversation

  1. Find a Board. Browse the directory and open a community that interests you. Public discussions may be readable before you sign in; some spaces require membership or permission.
  2. Make yourself at home. Choose Log in / Register on that Board. In My Account, you can edit your profile, choose a name, and add a profile picture.
  3. Pick a Forum and a thread. Open a subject from the Board’s index, then choose a conversation. The links above a thread lead back to its Forum and Board.
  4. Add your voice. Use Reply to join the conversation, or New Thread in a Forum to start a different topic. Give a new thread a clear title so others can find it.
  5. Bring someone into the conversation. Choose @ Mention in the editor and select a member. They’ll get an alert according to their notification preferences. Use Quote when you want to respond to a particular post.

Pick up where you left off

Search
The search in this site’s header finds Boards. Once you’re on a Board, its header search finds discussions in that community.
Active Topics
Catch up with conversations that have recent activity, across the Board’s Forums.
Follow and Notifications
Follow a thread to keep track of replies. For a wider view, choose Follow forum or Follow board. Their Email me every new post option sends alerts for new discussion posts. Manage these choices in Notifications → Following, and enable email for mentions in Notification settings.
Members
Find people in the community, open their profiles, and see what they’ve shared.
Blogs and RSS
Blogs are an author’s own entries, alongside the Forums. Find them in the Board’s Blogs tab or on the author’s profile. Public blog feeds offer RSS, so you can follow them in a feed reader. Board and Forum follows cover discussion posts; blogs have their own feeds.

Weave a community of your own

Start with a name, a description, and a few Forums that give people an obvious place to say hello and ask questions. You can add more as your community grows.

We currently help set up Boards manually. You can ask us to help start yours, or host an independent installation on your own server.

Ready to find your first thread? Browse Boards