It doesn’t seem like you can click onto a website these days without seeing a “blog” or “forum” in one of the corners of the home page. While they both enable visitors of websites to communicate with the sites creators, owners and other site visitors, they do so in different ways and have different types of followings. The differences between blogs and forums is pretty much as follows:

• A blog is short for “web log” and is very similar to a personal journal or diary published on the World Wide Web, visible to anyone that the owner allows to. One person or one small group of people owns a blog and is ultimately responsible for choosing the topic (or topics) of all entries on it (as well as who can read it). Readers can write comments, but that is not the main purpose of the blog.

• A forum is a collaboration of an online community, with any member having the ability to start a topic for discussion. One person or one group of people does not control it. Forums rely completely on the ideas and responses of its members, all reflecting the interests of a large group instead of just one individual person. It’s sort of like a chat room, only it’s not live.

• To sum it up, forums create a community feel because every member can contribute with questions, comments, or any writing that their heart desires, while blogs just can’t compare to the close-knit bonds created in forums.

Forums, whether you pay for them or you’ve found a free one, need to be kept interesting to help keep people coming back to visit your site. Many websites have been known to pay specific individuals to write and post on the forum instead of leaving it completely to the members. As long as your hired hands keep their posts and threads on the generalized topic and don’t stray off so that your members don’t return, you’ll see an increase in the amount of people visiting your forum, your website and at the end of the day your product and/or sales.

But not all forums are created to make the money flow like water. In fact, many of them are run as a hobby, or a general or specific interest simply looking to create a common area for those with similar interest to come together and chat without the pressure and immediate need that a chat room can cause. No matter the reasons behind creating one, forums need to be monitored, updated and kept in control to be a successful and safe haven for those with a common ground.