Internet forums may be referred to as discussion forums, message boards, or discussion boards.  This site will simply refer to it as a Forum.  A forum allows site visitors and members to share their ideas, thoughts, and comments on various topics.  It is frequently visited by web users to ask specific questions, share their knowledge and opinions, and also find out what everyone is talking about.  An exciting feature of forums is the ability of Registered Members to post content on the site and interact with other members of the site.  In many cases, a forum brings together a group of members of a website and allows them to talk amongst themselves.

    The forum will house many different topics and because of this there are forum groups, forums, and topics.  For example there may be a News Forum Group, an Election Forum, and multiple topics that fall into this forum category.  With this organization, site members can easily find what they would like to discuss or find more information about a certain topic.  Generally speaking these groups, forums, and topics will be created by the Site Administrator or Forum Manager.  Once created, Registered Members can post a reply (sometimes known as a thread in other forums) to a topic.  Users who are not members, or not logged into the site will only be able to view the posts, and not reply.

 

 

Key Definitions of Common Forum Terms

• Avatar - A header image before a forum user's post.  This is chosen and uploaded by the forum user.
• Emoticons - small graphics that display a human emotion.
• Filter - The way in which the forum replaces certain words that may be unappropriate, or words that can be replaced by graphics called Emoticons.
• Posts - a submitted response by a forum user.
• Profile - a user's information E.g. location, age, email address, etc.
• Signature - a digital signature that can be chosen and uploaded by a forum user that is displayed at the end of the user's post.  It may include their email or internet website address.  All of the user's posts will display this same Signature unless it is changed by the user.