I’ve been following this subject from the cheap seats and I take the fact that people (including myself) are disappointed when the forum can’t be accessed as a sign that there is still a loyal following of the website.
I’m sure a lot of us do follow things on FB but it doesn’t really lend itself well to breaking a group page into multiple subject categories. The group pages are typically limited to a single thread that is a catch-all for every subject/post. A dedicated website does a much better job at this.
The smart phones do some amazing things but I’m still a PC guy. When I want to look at sunset photos I want to see them on a giant monitor, rather than a 3x5” screen. So I can’t speak for the phone people but, as others have suggested, the ad elimination on a laptop is remarkably simple.
I still run the Google Chrome browser and use an easily down-loadable ad blocker, which is claimed to be the #1 ad blocker for Chrome. It is basically free unless you want to donate a few bucks to the cause. It’s simple to do and it will totally change your browsing experience. You will get few, if any, ads and no pop-ups.
The ad blocker is customizable and you can disable it on specific web pages or an entire website. Some websites play hardball and will not let you access certain features with an ad blocker enabled. Fortunately, this website isn’t one of them.
I’ll defer the phone solutions to the people that know phones but I highly recommend you install an ad blocker if you are using Google Chrome as a browser on your PC. It will bring you back to the days of no ads.