Forums are communities where people discuss topics of interests, concerns, controversy, offer helpful suggestions and tips for doing business, offer valuable resources to others and sometimes really give their opinions about products, services and businesses that operate online. Some are good and sometimes negative. Many online businesses have taken advantage of having forums since they strongly believe that keeping in constant contact and communication lines open with customers and potential customers is the way to increase their client base and it fosters trust and loyalty between the two parties. It’s also a great opportunity for business owners to get to know customers on a more personal level and to learn something from their target market needs.
The following are the types of forums: Cascaded Summit
This type of forum is a summit page that typically is hierarchically linked to another summit. (Just as folders can contain links to subfolders, summits can contain links to cascaded summits.) If the top summit includes a very large group of users who need their own private work area, then a cascaded summit can serve this purpose. (Small groups can create a team area, which is described later in this section.) For example, the top summit can serve every employee in a company, and cascaded summits can serve each department: Engineering Department, Human Resources Department, Marketing Department, and so on.
Discussion and Document-Sharing Forums
This type of forum, nicknamed "docshare" forums, provides access to threaded discussions, documents, URLs, and surveys. Threaded discussions are posted notes in the form of topics and replies to the topic.
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Adult
