| Forum Structure - How Forums Work
(Posted On: Mon 16th Feb 2009 at 10:24) | | Many users here may not be familiar with what a forum is or how a forum works. For many of you this may be your first time using a forum.
So firstly, what is a forum?
A forum is a place for online discussion. It's somewhere for people to interact with others and participate in an online community.
Forums are sometimes referred to as message boards or bulletin boards. But for simplicity, we will keep to the term "forum".
Key Terminology
This is just a brief overview of some of the terminology which we will be using. It enables you to see how the forum is structured.
Forum
This entire site is a "Forum". The Forum Homepage is the page seen at http://forum.surrey-online.co.uk
Category
A "Category" groups similar "boards" together. We've decided on using 3 main categories, "Business" for business related discussion, "Living" for sharing your views on what is happening in surrey and what you like to do in surrey and "Community" as a place to share information on what community facilities are avaliable in surrey.
Board
A board, again, groups topics into similar sections. Its's a way of organising where topics are so that users can easily find topics which are relvant or interesting to them. If something doesn't seem to fit into any board then it is usually posted in the General Board
Topic
A "Topic" is a discussion about something in particular. It could be about a news story or just what your favourite drink is*. Other users then post replies to both the original topic starter and each other.
Post / Reply
This is an individual message posted in a topic.
To think of it in another way:
A forum is made up of a few categories.
Each category is made up of several boards.
Each board contains lots of topics.
Each topic contains many replies.
So what next?
If you are still unsure on any of that terminology or how to go about using this forum then try reading them again from the bottom up. If you're still unsure then contact us or post a reply below.
*This conforms with forum culture where if there is very little happening someone is duty bound to post a topic asking if you prefer coke or pepsi. | |
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