Shower thought.

 

Surely, internet boards came first...

Pretty much. The only real difference is presentation of that; blogs are a few-to-many publishing method, forums are a many-to-many publishing method.

 

Blogs came along at a point when forums couldn’t sustain the posting of thought leaders within a community vs the regular populace.

presentation

This is probably the main factor in deciphering the two because the target audience surely overlaps, be it few-to-many or many-to-many.

Sort of.

 

The main deal with a blog vs a forum is that you have a few publishing content with everyone else having more or less ability to reply to it, while in a forum typically everyone can post. The result is that in the latter case, no-one is special, while in the former, the author is more important than usual; the dynamic of publisher to commentator is different.

 

Presentation plays a key - e.g. XF's article threads vs regular threads, where the author gets a more concrete byline than you'd normally see on a forum precisely because it's not just about the content but about the author presenting the content - who says it can be as important as what's being said, a distinction very often lost in a forum because the presentation of a forum is intentionally neutral like that.

The result is that in the latter case, no-one is special, while in the former, the author is more important than usual; the dynamic of publisher to commentator is different.

Can't this go for communities too, big and small? Groups tend to favor individuals, whether they be senior members or staff members. Now, while it might be more than 1 person, I have been a part of a community where the most favored was 1 person (a big board), and the brand was essentially him, until a scandal.

Presentation plays a key - e.g. XF's article threads vs regular threads, where the author gets a more concrete byline than you'd normally see on a forum precisely because it's not just about the content but about the author presenting the content

This is more or less, now, a blog post though. The presentation of the thread layout gave the author the more prominent byline and whatnot, but the fact remains the same, you're still on a forum.

There is a huge difference between the workings of the thing and the optics of the thing. Mechanically, yes, a forum is very much a redress of what mechanics a blog needs, and I have certainly dabbled in various creative abuses of boards in forums as blogs with limited posting rights before now.

 

But in a pure forum, the author of a topic is not especially prominent because in a forum setting, no individual is more important than any other by default. Even if some individuals are by dint of permissions or reputation (whether tracked and measured or not), the software inevitably treats them the same. Whatever meaning or special behaviours there are, are standard features applied specifically; it is meaning given form after the fact.

 

It is one of the things that irks me, and continues to irk me, how badly XF uses its own site to sell its software. It should be showcasing these features loud and proud because a “blog” adjunct to a forum is important - it’s one of the ways to add additional content, especially that “authoritative content” that the search engines like. And it feels so underbaked and left to add-on authors to fix,

 

It is also one of my criticisms of AMS and co that it feels disjointed for how it handles articles vs comments (not AMS’s fault as much as XF’s for failing to set out a sensible design language to convey the distinction)

I don't necessarily see them as a forum. They're not as organized as a forum can be, and sometimes blog posts aren't broken up into paragraphs so it can be more difficult to read than a forum post IMO. Again it's just my perspective. Blogs are more like static websites than forums to me.

I don't necessarily see them as a forum. They're not as organized as a forum can be, and sometimes blog posts aren't broken up into paragraphs so it can be more difficult to read than a forum post IMO. Again it's just my perspective. Blogs are more like static websites than forums to me.

Think of a typical blog as closer to a forum board than an entire forum.

 

As for paragraph splits, most forum software does not bother to break this up to paragraphs meaning that when you read nicely split forum posts, chances are you're reading someone's content that has been consciously formatted.

I don't necessarily see them as a forum. They're not as organized as a forum can be, and sometimes blog posts aren't broken up into paragraphs so it can be more difficult to read than a forum post IMO. Again it's just my perspective. Blogs are more like static websites than forums to me.

If I am writing a very detailed post, I will use proper paragraphs when needed. My writing style will have to shift, otherwise you would be extremely lost if I continued without creating a new paragraph. This afternoon, I'm going to see if we can get pizza. See? It just doesn't make sense, even in short posts.

Think of a typical blog as closer to a forum board than an entire forum.

Forum (nodes, or whatever you want to call them) could be individual blogs if you set the permissions to "post new thread" on registered to "no" on every one of them, but gave a specific user that permission, for as long as the software would allow you.

 

Then you could essentially host free blogs...

f I am writing a very detailed post, I will use proper paragraphs when needed. My writing style will have to shift, otherwise you would be extremely lost if I continued without creating a new paragraph. This afternoon, I'm going to see if we can get pizza. See? It just doesn't make sense, even in short posts.

Good thing blogging software typically makes this at least as easy as doing this in forums, and often considerably easier because blogging tools tend to focus on such things as part of the content creation stage.

 

It's one of the subtle differences between being given a WYSIWYG-ish type editor (a la forums) and being given something vastly more extensive like WordPress's Gutenberg (though you can return it to being just a WYSIWYG editor with a plugin)

 

Then you could essentially host free blogs...

So why do more sites not do this?

So why do more sites not do this?

Probably because it's much easier to get WHMCS and allow for people to sign up with full control to deploy WordPress.

 

But, there are free blogging sites that don't use WordPress.

 

I could see XenForo being a competitor to those, but the market would be very limiting in how many you could get on. Using Bob's UBS might help... but doable with forum nodes.

 

There are also no customizability features built-in where the node owners could set the user style for their node only and display a different logo. However, by doing this, on XenForo at least, would be against the terms.

Can multiple domains or subdomains be used with a single license?

Yes, as long as the domains or subdomains all resolve to the same installation, all of the content is available at every domain or subdomain, and there is no attempt to make them appear as separate installations.

 

The thing would be to get a name for yourself though, if using something other than XF as a base.

To me, blogging is more about the owner/publisher. And forums are more about the 'us' factor.

To me, blogging is more about the owner/publisher. And forums are more about the 'us' factor.

If a blog is niche enough, I don't see how frequent commenters can't also develop parasocial relationships among each other and it too become an 'us' factor.

Probably because it's much easier to get WHMCS and allow for people to sign up with full control to deploy WordPress.

 

But, there are free blogging sites that don't use WordPress.

 

I could see XenForo being a competitor to those, but the market would be very limiting in how many you could get on. Using Bob's UBS might help... but doable with forum nodes.

 

There are also no customizability features built-in where the node owners could set the user style for their node only and display a different logo. However, by doing this, on XenForo at least, would be against the terms.

 

 

The thing would be to get a name for yourself though, if using something other than XF as a base.

You don’t even need to present them as separate sites, nothing stopping you presenting them as blogs from the community. Sort of like Invision does and XF half-heartedly does (think the HYS board), but even that isn’t widely done as far as I can tell.