Found under Connections and Community, this is one of the society's most powerful communications tools, and one of the most visited areas on the site.  It is open to all researchers and is, therefore, unlimited in its access.
 
The forums are distinguished from the blogs.  The forums are for personal family history enquiries and responses, where generally people are looking for information about someone, at some place, at some time.  We are trying to make connections.  The blogs are where people are reporting or opening up a specific subject for discussion such as name variants, pronunciation, physical characteristics, heraldry and so on.
 
The forum is comprised of sub-groups to add focus and to help research volunteers use their experience to greatest advantage.  The forum on the previous web site finished up with nearly 1000 subjects and it was tough to plough through them all.  All those previous messages, wherever possible, have been transferred to the new site and allocated to a sub-group and to individual sub-forums where applicable.
 
The main sub-groups are

• Country related
• Lost relatives
• Place related
• Name specific (for Dunphy and Donaghy)

Each sub-forum within these groups has a search facility.
 
So start communicating please