FORUM HOSTING

What does a Forum mean?

A forum is referred as a number of different names that include bulletin board, message board or discussion group. Regardless of this, these type of websites give its all of the members ability to post the topics in very organized manner.

A forum encourages all of its members to read & respond posted threads. You can start forum on any of the basic topic that you can think of and can create community of the users around all of it.

Structure of Forum

Forums are well organized in intuitive hierarchy. Most of the forums have central themes and are broken down in particular categories. Each of these topics are broken down in threads where forum members post and converse.

Suppose, if you looking forward to launch a sports based forum. Categories that keep each sports visible on forum and visitors will be able to discuss sports like soccer, football, hockey, baseball and basketball. Members start threads in each of the categories about the relevant topic.

Forum Hosting

An Internet based forum is an area of website where people have discussions with each other. A forum may have several or single topic area under which the discussions are done. All of these conversations are known as threads. Each single thread consists of string of replies and messages. Organization of these messages gets varied depending on structure of message board, but they are hierarchical.

Administrators of message board control and site options. Some of the websites allow to post in anonymously manner. Others need to create account and log in before posting any of the messages. Moderators help to eliminate the spammers, address questions and complaints, encourage interaction and keep conversations polite.

Features of Forum Hosting

• Social Networking buttons including Facebook, Twitter, Google +1 and more
  – Topic Sharing and Social Bookmarks
  – Announcements and Sticky Topics
  – Hot topics icons

• Admin tools for Topics – Edit, Delete, Move, Lock, Sticky, Event Date, Icon, etc.

• Topic preview using mouse over

• Email page to friend option

• Topic Rating System

• Forum Polls – Create Topics that contains Polls which your members and visitors can vote on

• Printer Friendly version of topics

• Last Unread Post Icon – Takes you directly to the last unread post in the topic (updated in real-time)

• Forum and Topic, New Post Icon with number of unread posts using mouse over

• Forum and Topic Subscriptions (optional notification by RSS Feeds or email)

• Un-answered Topics – Topics with no replies since last visit or defined period

• Active Topics – Topics containing new posts since last visit or other user defined period

• Topic display options – Sort by Topics, Topic Starter, Replies, Views, Post Date, etc.