What Is a Forum?

Broadly speaking, a forum is a web page that contains a series of messages or postings submitted by web site visitors. A forum is generally set up to host discussions on a particular subject: politics, a rock band, a computer program, a football team and so on.

The postings in a forum are organized in threads, which roughly correspond to conversations. A visitor initiates a thread by posting a message that is not a reply to any other posting (done by clicking on some kind of "post message" link on the forum page). The posting appears on the forum page together with some kind of "reply" link that allows other visitors to reply to the posting. Their postings then belong to this new thread, as do any replies to their postings.

There are many different variations on this basic idea:

• Some forums require visitors to register as a user and log in to be able to submit postings. This gives the forum publisher a minimum of control over the forum (the ability to identify and block troublesome posters, for example).

• Forums that do not require registration usually have some kind of CAPTCHA system to prevent the automated posting of spam messages.

• Most forum publishers also reserve the right to remove postings with illegal or offensive content. It is very common for published postings to contain a "complaints" link that allows visitors to submit complaints about such postings, thus increasing the forum publisher's ability to respond quickly.

• In a moderated forum, all postings must be read and approved by a moderator before they can be published.

• Forum functionality can be used to allow visitors to comment on articles published on a site.