Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Creating Message Boards

Message boards provide the structure that simple guestbooks lack. Most of the messages that people post on message boards are fairly short, but unlike a guestbook, messages aren’t just listed in a simple top-down or bottom-up order that’s based on when they’re posted. Instead, a message board lists its postings by topic. In fact, the whole purpose of a message board is different from that of a guestbook. Both guestbooks and message boards let people leave messages, but message boards also let people interact with one another.

Before a new message is posted, the poster chooses a subject or topic line for it. As other people respond to the message, that topic automatically carries over, and the reply is connected to the original message. Usually, the board lists these postings in a hierarchy, where each response is indented beneath the message it replies to, and the series of messages on one topic is called a thread. Visitors to your site can follow a thread from beginning to end, jump in and reply to any message in the thread, or start an entirely new discussion by posting a new message.

Message boards almost always deal with a particular field of interest that visitors to a Web site have in common. Here are some common examples:

✓	Professional discussions
✓	Political issues
✓	Regional concerns
✓	Hobbies
✓	Current events
✓	Technical support

Obviously, a publicly available forum on controversial topics gives people who are less than polite an opening to be disruptive. ...