Hi Gilly, Glad you're enjoying yourself. :)
Setting up a group for defence families sounds like a great idea!
You can set it up yourself -- to create a group click on ‘create a group’ at the bottom of your ‘My groups’ page and then fill out the form. It's pretty self-explanatory, but there's also more information on how to create a group on page 10 of the user guide if you want it (you can download the guide on the Help page (see the top right of this page, just above your profile box).
We're aiming to add an "other" field to the interests section where you can type in whatever you want, but for now, just put the key words (whatever you think, like "defence" or "families") in the group 'about us' section, and those will come up on a search.
Regarding search, we've made some changes to the way that works which will be deployed later this week, which should help with finding members by name. Just remember, though, that if someone has their information set to hidden or private, they won't come up in network searches because it means they want to keep some of their details private.
Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense.
Have fun! :)
Di
