def custom_tokenise_forum(text):
    # this is one possible URL pattern, more complicated patterns that catch different URLs are possible.
    URL = '(?:\w+://)?(?:[-\w]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,9}[-\w/#~:;.?+=&%@~]*'
    hyphenated = '\w+\-\w+'
    apostrophes = '\w+\'\w+'
    word = '\w+'
    pun = '[^\w\s\']+'
    hashtags = '#\w+'
    mentions = '@\w+'
    patterns = (URL, hyphenated, apostrophes, mentions, hashtags, pun, word)
    # the patterns are split with | for alternation.
    joint_patterns = '|'.join(patterns)
    # format is used to build the pattern, surrounding with (?:...) for non-captured grouping for alternation.
    p = re.compile(r'(?:{})'.format(joint_patterns), re.UNICODE)
    return p.findall(text)