The Difference Between a Forum and a Blog
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 site owner will create different areas of the forum, which are the high level topics.
Members can 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 loads of website comment, which could drive more visitors to your website! What is a blog? A blog in the traditional sense start with you the site owner, possibly with a team of other authors, writing posts about whatever subjects that you choose to start writing about.
Members of a blog are readers and they might follow your latest writing through email alerts or by watching your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.
This alerts them to the latest posts and they can go straight to the posts that interest them.
Their involvement in the blog is to read your posts and if there is a real community feel they might even get around to leaving the odd comments.
You might want to reply and on occasion they might reply back.
Where are they the same? The purpose of both a forum and a blog 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 website 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 website and both can be used together.
In a blog, you the website owner write a post about 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 likely to come back and add more thoughts to the topics being discussed.
Your involvement as the website owner is probably just to keep an eye on the posts and remove any inappropriate entries.
So a forum and a blog are both tools to make visitors feel that they are part of your site, keep them interested and returning to find out what it going on, but in a blog you are in control totally of the topics that are being discussed whereas in a forum the members can start new discussions.
What is a forum? For a start, a forum is a way of members leaving comments and talking with each other.
You as the site owner will create different areas of the forum, which are the high level topics.
Members can 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 loads of website comment, which could drive more visitors to your website! What is a blog? A blog in the traditional sense start with you the site owner, possibly with a team of other authors, writing posts about whatever subjects that you choose to start writing about.
Members of a blog are readers and they might follow your latest writing through email alerts or by watching your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.
This alerts them to the latest posts and they can go straight to the posts that interest them.
Their involvement in the blog is to read your posts and if there is a real community feel they might even get around to leaving the odd comments.
You might want to reply and on occasion they might reply back.
Where are they the same? The purpose of both a forum and a blog 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 website 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 website and both can be used together.
In a blog, you the website owner write a post about 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 likely to come back and add more thoughts to the topics being discussed.
Your involvement as the website owner is probably just to keep an eye on the posts and remove any inappropriate entries.
So a forum and a blog are both tools to make visitors feel that they are part of your site, keep them interested and returning to find out what it going on, but in a blog you are in control totally of the topics that are being discussed whereas in a forum the members can start new discussions.
Source...