There are as many different names for a forum as there are people using them. Some think of them as message boards or bulletin boards. Some call them threaded discussions while others call them conferences. And we call them forums.

Figuring out whether you need just one forum or multiple forums can be difficult if you're not sure about how they are defined and what's in them. Below is an illustrative explanation of a forum, its categories, topics and messages. To help with our illustration, we will use a mock-up of Macromedia's developer community forums as a real example.

Forum: a single collaborative "space" that has its own URL. Each separate forum always points to its own URL. In the case of Macromedia and the sheer size of their developer community, they have chosen to use a separate forum for each product.

Note that each product forum points to a different URL.

Category: Every FuseTalk-powered forum allows for unlimited categories. A category is a sub-division of a forum that deals with a specific subject area within the larger subject of the forum. In the screenshot below of the ColdFusion developer community forum, you can see the top six categories listed. The folder icons can be set to indicate if a new topic has been posted, whether the individual forum member has viewed it and so on.

Topic: Within every category, FuseTalk provides the ability to maintain unlimited numbers of topics. A new topic is created anytime a forum member posts a new message that is not a reply to an existing message. Below we have opened the "Getting Started" category in the ColdFusion forum to view a list of topics.

Message: Within every topic, FuseTalk also provides the ability to maintain unlimited messages. A message is any text posted by a forum member that is either a reply to a message or a new message in its own right.