Creative Forum

About "Forum"

There are so many different names for a “forum”. Some think of them as message boards or bulletin boards. Some call them threaded discussions, discussion boards or discussion groups while others call them conferences.

Deciding if just one forum or multiple forums is needed can be difficult, especially if there is an uncertainty of how they are defined and what makes a forum.
The simplistic definition of a forum is a place where people have the ability to start communication (in the form of threads) and reply to other people's threads. A member of the community in the forum posts a message, which is visible to everyone in that community. Once read, there is the option to post a reply, which can also be visible to the community. Thus, a discussion can build up without all users having to be online at the same time.

FuseTalk can allow for more than one forum to be created. These forums can be considered as containers for threads started by the community. Depending on the permissions of community members as defined by the forum administrator, they can post replies to existing threads and start new threads as they wish. In addition, users of a forum can post anonymously (if this is enabled by the Forum Administrator) or as their registered username.

Basic Structure of a Forum

A forum consists of 4 components: the forum itself, its categories, the topics and the messages. Each component, or level of hierarchy, is illustrated in the diagram below.





Each forum can have an unlimited number of categories and sub-categories. Categories are like placeholders in which topics of discussion and messages are contained. Henceforth, a category manages the forum’s topics into folders or groupings. This is a logical method of sorting topics. On the home page of the forum, a listing of all the categories to which the user has access, excluding those categories that the user wishes to block from viewing, will be displayed. In addition, the user will see the number of topics posted within each corresponding category, and the date/time/author of the last posting made in the corresponding category. To find out quickly if new messages have been posted since the last viewing, simply hover over the clipboard icon corresponding to the category in question.

Users of a Forum