Forgive me my ignorance, but I am looking for a forum software which supports Facebook-style user walls in addition to everything else. I’m thinking of a page where a user can post personal things and others can comment - sort of like a one-person public group everyone can subscribe to. Is there a plugin or anything which would give this functionality?
Greetings,
Michael
How would this be different than a listing of @user mentions? I am just curious.
Well, it would be much more about presenting oneselves life with pictures, quotes, thoughts. The only applicable subject would be “me”, not a topic of a forum. Facebook does some things very well, why not copy them?
That isn’t what Discourse is. Discourse is a discussion forum. From the team: “We’re on a ten year mission to improve the Internet with free, open-source discussion software that raises the level of discourse for the entire world.” (emphasis mine). What you seem to be looking for is a social media or personal blog system. I’d suggest using SSO to integrate an existing system into Discourse, rather than turn Discourse into something it is not.
No argument that Facebook does things well, but Discourse isn’t trying to make a social media platform - that’s why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to copy what they do.
Yes, of course. I’d just love to have a decent online forum with strong Social Media features, this is no contradiction. In fact, in the early days of online communities, this distinction did not exist at all. But maybe I’m just old-fashioned… 
Discourse is a discussion forum, but people use discourse to make their own unique forums where these kinds of features aren’t frowned upon for no reason
(pardon for the necrobump, I am trying to find something like this as well)
This exists in Topic List Previews (plugin and theme component) and an official Theme Component iirc.
In TLP you simply tag a topic with a reserved tag (appointed in the settings) and it shows up on your Portfolio view on your user Activity page. You can rename the view if you prefer. It’s just a way of highlighting a bunch of important Topics from that user. On desktop you can style the view to appear like tiles if you like.
TLP adds a button on the user card to assist discovery of that page.
In addition the Follow Plugin mimics a user based news feed providing a Topic List called “Following” that only shows recent Topics authored by or involving someone you follow.
I don’t see any kind of profile/user wall plugin anywhere here
Have you installed the plugin or TC (comes in both flavours), set the portfolio tag and navigated to the user activity and portfolio route? Sorry the plugin OP is an incomplete reference. Best experiences by trying it out. The ‘wall’ is of course just a list of Topics determined by the combo of user and tag. The tag allows the user to ‘curate’ what appears. If a user ‘wall’ cannot be simulated with a curated list of topics I’m not sure I fully understand what a user wall is. What functional gap remains? Happy to consider evolving this if practical. I guess educating users to add a tag is required.
I’ve added instructions to the OP of the TLP plugin.