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The Variation Between a Discussion board and a Blog

By: Keith R Lunt

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Not sure what the difference is between a forum and a weblog? Wondering which you should install and use on your web site? Maybe you should use both?

If you are not sure what the difference is between a forum and a site 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 website 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 web site as the members will visit as a rule 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 a load of website comment, which could drive more traffic to your website!

What is a blog?
A weblog in the traditional sense start with you the web site owner, possibly with a team of other authors, writing posts round whatever subjects that you choose to start writing round.

Members of a website are readers and they might follow your latest writing through email alerts or by watching your RSS (Really Straightforward Syndication) feed. This alerts them to the latest posts and they can go straight to the posts that interest them.

Their involvement in the site is to read your posts and if there is a real community feel they may 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 site is to get your visitors coming back time after time and feeling like they are part of the community of the website. They are both tools that build up a community of the web site and hopefully customer loyalty. In both, your traffic could leave comments for others to read.

So, where are they different?
There is a huge fundamental difference between the two features of a website and both might be used together. In a site, you the web site owner write a post around 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 more than potential to come back and add more thoughts to the topics being discussed. Your involvement as the website owner is perhaps only to keep an eye on the posts and remove any inappropriate entries.

So a forum and a website are both tools to make traffic feel that they are part of your site, keep them interested and returning to find out what it occurring, but in ablog you are in control totally of the topics that are being discussed whereas in a forum the members could start new discussions.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Written by Keith Lunt of How To Start My Blog. Call in if you need any help or advice with starting blogging.

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