A website that provides an exchange of information about a topic. An Internet forum provides a venue for questions and answers and may be monitored to keep the content appropriate. Also called a "discussion board" or "discussion group," an Internet forum uses the Web browser for access.
Although the term Internet forum is not used as much today, venues such as Reddit and Quora are, in fact, very popular discussion forums over the Internet (see
Reddit and
Quora). Forums are a form of social media such as X and Facebook; however, forums are created around a topic of interest rather than friends, family and customers. See
social media.
Before the Web
Prior to the Web, text-only forums were common on bulletin boards and proprietary online services. However, Internet forums include all the extras people expect from the Web, including images, videos, downloads and links, sometimes functioning as a mini-portal on the topic.
Forums can be entirely anonymous or require registration with username and password. Messages may be displayed in chronological order of posting or in question-answer order where all related answers are displayed under the question (see
message thread).
Forums/Newsgroups vs. Chat Rooms
Forums are like Usenet "newsgroups," the original Internet discussion groups, and both systems keep postings online for some period of time. Users can scroll back in time and do not have to be logged in the moment they are posted. In contrast, chat rooms are interactive real-time sessions, and users must be present to participate. See
newsgroup and
chat room.
Turn a Site into a Forum
There is a variety of forum creation software for the Web, typically written in Java, PHP, Perl or ASP. The software can be used to create forum-only sites or to add a discussion section to any Web page.