Web forum
A web forum (sometimes also called an Internet forum, but often just a forum) is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions. Usually, each forum is organized in topics (topic categories) and threads. A thread is a posting with all its follow-ups; threads can be linear or have a tree structure. Unlike a mailing list or web group, the postings in a forum are not sent via e-mail. Unlike a chatroom, the discussions in a forum do not take place in real-time.
The proper latin plural of forum is "fora", but "forums" is also common in modern english.
Forums may require membership/registration (which can be free or not), or can allow anyone to participate without membership.
Most forums are text-based only, but some also allow embedding images in the postings, and/or visual "fun stuff" such as formatted text or animated smileys.
Forums are often part of a larger website (free site or pay site).
See also
- Bulletin board systems (BBS)
- Newsgroup
- Guestbook (can be considered a kind of non-membership, single-linear-thread forum)
- Blog (a "broadcast" site in which only one person posts)
- Wiki
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