What Is a Forum?

A forum is...

• a public square or marketplace of a city (such as in ancient Rome) that is the assembly place for judicial activity and public business.
• A public meeting space for free discussion.
• A mechanism for open discussion including expressing ideas and asking questions, such as a newspaper, a radio or television program, or a website.

The forums available with Website Designer fall into the third category. Sometimes forums are called Bulletin Board Services (BBS), online discussion groups, news groups, etc.

Easy Forum Setup

Website Designer provides you with a fast and easy way of creating an online forum on your website. A forum at your website allows for ongoing online discussion for your members. Just as GolfSoftware.com has various forums where users can ask and answer questions about our software, you can create forums for your membership to address league, club, course (and more) issues.

How Does It Work?

You can imagine it could be quite chaotic if various members were asking questions and voicing opinions in a forum and others were responding. How is all this organized? Imagine each question or comment, and also the replies, are each a bead. Just as you can make a collection of beads by passing a thread through them, a similar process happens in an online forum. All questions, comments, and replies to a question or comment that started a specific discussion are collected together and called a "thread." People in your golf group may start threads on topics such as...

• how handicaps are calculated
• course characteristics
• which putters people prefer
• etc.

As a participant in a golf league or other group, it is very easy to "post" a comment, question, or response. As the responses to an originating comment or question grow, you have a full-blown discussion or "thread."

Is It Moderated?

If your group chooses to do so, someone from your group can moderate the forum if necessary. Moderating a forum means that you might move a comment from one forum to another that is more appropriate. A moderator can also delete comments if they are inappropriate to the forum in any way the group defines. GolfSoftware.com does not provide such moderator services. Many forums operate without any moderator.

Create Your Website Forum

1. From within Website Designer, make sure you have the "Menu" tab selected (rather than the Pages tab).
   
   

2. From the Menu menu select "Insert menu item (New)"
   
   
3. Select the "Community Forum Page" by doubleclicking on it or highlighting/selecting (click once with left mouse button) it and clicking on the Insert button.
   
   
   
   
4. Enter information into "Page Information" window and click OK button. Note that on the Community Forum Page Information form you can only alter the Menu text.
   
   
   
   
5. Your new Community Forum is now on the navigation menu and ready to administer.
   
   
   
   
6. Click on the "Administer your Community Forum" link to set up your forum.
   
   
   
   
7. You will find further instructions on this administration page to help set up your forum(s).