An insight into Online Forums and Blog

3. Introduction
Today we are living in a world of endless opportunities. All that was made
possible with the help of technology. In earlier times people had to wait for
months in order to get a reply for a letter or wait for weeks in order to get
conformation for a particular job vacancy. Also, people had to visit particular or
respective offices to make corrections to a document. The only source of
information were teachers and books. Now with the introduction of Information
and Communication Technology, everything is at our finger tips now. The instant
messaging applications helped us to establish effective communication with
people around the world. The introduction of e-mail made it easier for people to
verify their documents via online for all purposes. The introduction of internet
search engines helped people to clear their doubts instantly and also helped them
to clarify their doubts with teachers all around the globe. This assignment deals
with two contributions in the field of Information and Communication
Technology – Online Forums and Blogs. Both of them share similar purpose, i.e.,
providing information, but in a different way. Both of these applications brought
revolutions in the field of Information and Communication Technology and still
plays a valuable role in providing information to people all around the world.

4. Online Forums
An internet forum/ Online forum/ Message Board is an online discussion
site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They
differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and
are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user
or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator
before it becomes publicly visible.
Forums had specific set of jargon associated with them. For example, a
simple conversation is called a “thread”, or topic.
A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure, a forum can
contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within
a forum’s topic, each new discussion started is called a thread and can be replied
to by as many people as so wish.
Depending on the forum’s settings, users can be anonymous or have to
register with the forum and then subsequently log in to post messages. On most
forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.
History
The modern forum originated from bulletin boards, and so-called computer
conferencing systems, and are a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin
board system. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web
applications managing user-generated content.

5. Early internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic
mailing list or newsgroup, allowing people to post messages and comment on
other messages. Later developments emulated the different news groups or
individual lists, providing more than one forum, dedicated to particular topic.
Some of the first forums were the Planet-Forum system developed at the
beginning of the 1970’s, the EIES system, first operational in 1976, and the KOM
system, first operational in 1977.
One of the first forum sites is Delphi Forums, once called Delphi, is still
active today with four million members, dates to 1983.
Forums are written in variety of programming languages such as PHP,
Java, Perl and ASP. The configuration and records of posts can be stored in text
files or in a database.
Structure
A forum consists of a tree-like directory structure. The top end is
“Categories”. A forum can be divided into categories for the relevant discussions.
Under the categories are sub-forums and these sub-forums can further have more
sub-forums. The topics, called threads come under the lowest level of sub-forums
and these are the places under which members can start their discussions or posts.
Logically forums are organized into a finite set of generic topics, usually with one
main topic, driven and updated by a group known as members, and governed by
a group known as moderators.

6. User Groups
Internally, Western-style forums organize visitors and logged in members
into user groups. Privileges and rights are based on these groups. A user of the
forum can automatically be promoted to more privileged user group based on
criteria set by the administrator.
Moderators
The moderators are the users of the forum who are granted access to the
posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion and
also keeping the forum clean. Common privileges of moderators include deleting
merging, moving and splitting of posts and threads, locking, renaming, stickying
of threads, banning, unbanning, suspending, unsuspending, warning the
members, or adding, editing and removing the polls of threads.
Administrators
The administrators manage the technical details required for running the
site. They may promote or demote the members to or from moderators, manage
the rules, create sections and subsections, as well as perform any database
operations. They often act as moderators.
Post
A post is a user submitted message enclosed into a block containing the
user’s details and the date and time it was submitted. Members are usually
allowed to edit or delete their own posts. Posts are contained in threads, where
they appear as blocks one after the another.

7. Stickying
Threads that are important but rarely receive posts are stickyed or in some
software pinned. A sticky thread will always appear in front of normal threads,
often in its own section.
Examples For Online Forums
Reddit
Reddit is a social news collection of web content along with ratings and
the discussion forum website. Reddit’s registered community members can
submit the content on various topics in the form of text posts or direct links.
Stack overflow
Stack Overflow is a quite popular question and answers based website for
any type of computer programming related queries. It allows the access to both
registered and guest users. The users can ask or answer the questions and can
discuss various alternate answers.

8. Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer community where users can ask any
logical and absurd question in the forum. Users can collaborate by editing
questions and suggesting edits to other users’ answers. The website was made
available in 2010. It is one of the most popular website.
India-Forums
India forums is one of the biggest discussion forums, started in December
2003. The users can discuss various television serials provide their views. This
forum has branched out to several other sections like Bollywood, Celebrity
interview, Internet Radio, Fan Clubs etc,.
Trip Advisor
Trip Advisor is a forum where the users can ask travel-related queries. The
users can also check the reviews of the hotels, locations and travel options. The
users can discuss, or post the comments, take precautions and can give
suggestions along with the real pictures to give good information.

9. Blog
A blog or a weblog is a discussion or informational website published on
the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text
entries, called posts. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order,
so that the most recent posts appear first, at the top of webpage.
History
The term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger. The short form blog was
coined by Peter Merholz.
The modern blog evolved from the online diary where people would keep
a running account of the events in their personal lives. After a short start,
blogging rapidly gained in popularity.
Types of blogs
Personal blogs
The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or commentary written by an
individual, rather than an corporation or organization. While vast number of
personal blogs attract very few readers, other than bloggers immediate family and
friends, a small number of personal blogs become popular.

10. Collaborative blogs or group blogs
A type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than
one author. The majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are organized
according to a single uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy.
Micro blogging
Micro blogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content
which could be text, pictures, links, short videos or other media on the internet.
It has captured the public imagination in part because the short posts are easy to
read on the go when waiting.
Corporate and organizational blogs
Blogs used internally and only available to employees via an intranet are
called corporate blogs. Companies use internal corporate blogs to enhance
communication culture and employee engagement in a corporation.
Aggregated blogs
Individuals or organization mat aggregate selected feeds on specific topic,
product or service and provide combined view for its readers. This allows readers
to concentrate on reading instead of searching for quality on topic content and
managing subscriptions.

11. By media type
o Vlog – Blog comprising videos.
o Link log – Log comprising links.
o Sketch blog – a site containing portfolio of sketches.
o Photo blog – Site containing photos.
o Tumblelogs – Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types.
Reverse Blog
A reverse blog is composed by its users rather thana single blogger. This
system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of several authors. These
can be written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone
to write. There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from
operating like a web forum.
Examples of Blogs
• Greatist – Health and fitness blog
• Nomadic Bratt – Travel Blog
• CoinDesk – Cryptocurrency blog
• ArsTechnica – Technology based blog
• Apartment Therapy – Home Design and décor
• Kitchn – Blog about food
• Digital Spy – Movies, TV and Entertainment
• Petapixel – Photography
• Tiny Buddha – Spreading good vibes
• Create and Go – Blogging tips

12. Conclusion
This assignment began with mentioning how the world of Information and
Communication Technology brought changes to humanity. This assignment
dealt with how the Online Forums and Blogs brought a revolution in the field of
Information and Technology. While Online forums held discussions on a
particular matter, Blogs meant for people to share their ideas and thoughts.
While Online Forums created opportunities for people to have conversations on
topics, Blogs provided limited opportunities for conversations but provided for
opportunities the people to share most relevant ideas for a particular topic.
While their character changed accordingly, they provided same purpose, i.e.,
sharing of knowledge from all around the world. The Online forum has many
structures, user groups, Moderators, administrators etc, while Blogs doesn’t have
this type of classification. Also, there were separate blogs for different purposes.
In conclusion, Online Forums and Blogs are very much useful for all types of
people especially in this current pandemic situation as a source of information
especially for students and teachers.

13. References
➢ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum
➢ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums
➢ https://www.tutorialspoint.com/top-10-online-forums
➢ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
➢ https://alphainvestors.com/blogging/examples-successful-blogs/