Not sure what the difference is between a forum and a blog? Wondering which you should install and use on your website? Maybe you should use both?
If you are not sure what the difference is between a forum and a blog then we will start with looking at what each of these does.
What is a forum?
For a start, a forum is a way of members leaving comments and talking with each other. You as the web site owner will create different areas of the forum, which are the high level topics. Members could then visit these different areas and create a new thread, which is a conversation. Other members will see the new thread and read the first post, adding their thoughts in new posts.
So a forum is a way of members starting and running conversations. It is good for your website as the members will visit frequently to see what new threads other members have started and to place replies on the threads that they are commenting on. Your members are generating lots of site comment, which might drive more visitors to your web site!
What is a weblog?
A weblog in the traditional sense start with you the web site owner, maybe with a team of other authors, writing posts around whatever subjects that you select to start writing about.
Members of a site are readers and they may follow your latest writing through email alerts or by watching your RSS (Really Easy Syndication) feed. This alerts them to the latest posts and they might go straight to the posts that interest them.
Their involvement in the website is to read your posts and if there is a real community feel they might even get around to leaving the odd comments. You may want to reply and on occasion they may reply back.
Where are they the same?
The purpose of both a forum and a weblog is to get your traffic coming back time after time and feeling like they are part of the community of the site. They are both tools that build up a community of the site and hopefully customer loyalty. In both, your visitors can leave comments for others to read.
So, where are they different?
There is a huge fundamental difference between the two features of a site and both can be used together. In a site, you the website owner write a post round whatever you want and readers may then leave simple comments. But in a forum, it is the readers that start the discussion and they are in excess of possible to come back and add more thoughts to the topics being discussed. Your involvement as the site owner is perhaps merely to keep an eye on the posts and remove any inappropriate entries.
So a forum and a site are both tools to make visitors feel that they are part of your website, keep them interested and returning to find out what it happening, but in ablog you are in control totally of the topics that are being discussed whereas in a forum the members can start new discussions.
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Written by Keith Lunt of How To Start Blogging . Call in if you need any help or advice with starting a blog .
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