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An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. Web-based forums, which date from around 1995, perform a similar function as the dial-up bulletin boards and Internet newsgroups that were numerous in the 1980s and 1990s. A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users. Technology, computer games, and politics are popular areas for forum themes, but there are forums for a huge number of different topics .

Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion forums, discussion groups, bulletin boards (but see also dial-up bulletin boards), fora (the proper Latin plural) or simply forums.

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Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries. In terms of countable posts, Japan is far in the lead with over two million posts per day on their largest forum, 2channel. The United States does not have any one large forum, but instead several hundred thousand smaller forums, the largest of which are GameFAQs, Gaia Online, and IGN. Other countries such as China, the Netherlands, and France are also home to hundreds of independent forums. Some countries such as Finland and Sweden do not have many prevalent forums despite having open and easily available Internet access. As of yet no study has been done on the prevalence of forums in countries around the world. It is also dubious as to whether any country has its own fora, as - especially in the English language - contributors to a forum often come from outside the country in which the forum is hosted. There is often not a 1-1 relationship between languages and countries: for example, English language fora are contributed to by people all over the world, whilst Japanese language fora are likely to be contributed to only by Japanese people, but Japanese people also contribute to English language fora, so there is no 1-1 relationship between Japanese language fora and Japanese people contributing to fora.

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A-Forum - ISAPI server application. Discussion forum for MS IIS running on Windows NT/2000/XP. Shareware. Highlights, installation instructions, FAQ, examples of this forum in use.
Meta Description: [ Apdsoft A-Forum ISAPI application for MS IIS - start a discussion forum on your web site in 5-10 minutes ]

Advanced Forum - CGI application that implements discussions on a website.
Meta Description: [ Powerful CGI forum for your website ]

aGNeS News Forum BBS - A bulletin board message system. It's free for non commercial use and run at WinNT, Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD.

BoardAide - Unofficial support forum for various message board systems.

Ceilidh - Group discussion program, written in C, for the World Wide Web. Threaded bulletin boards for BeOS, Mac, OS/2, UNIX and Windows web servers.
Meta Description: [ The Ceilidh Home Page. Ceilidh is a second generation group discussion program, written in C, for the World Wide Web. ]

DiscusWare - WWW discussion board software package that can be installed on a Unix or Windows 95/98/NT web server. Installation takes about 15 minutes and does not require hand-editing of the script files. Free and paid versions available.

404 Net.Polemics - A free ISAPI based bulletin board system. For Windows NT4/2000/XP servers. List of features, a working demo, and download.
Meta Description: [ telus.net, the premier Canadian Internet Service Provider and the leader of online customer support in the ISP marketplace. ]

OpenACS - An open-source version of the ArsDigita Community System, comprised of a Web server plus PostgreSQL database. Free download, documentation, FAQ, forums, links to existing sites using this solution. [Unix, source]

SiteNet BBS - Shareware discussion forum package allows polls, moderation, email notification, password protection. Built-in search engine. Features, requirements, registration information, working demos.
Meta Description: [ Add a full set of professional eye catching forums to your web site with ease. Loaded with many features, and designed with community building in mind. ]

TalkSpread - Commercial software suitable for private and public uses. Runs on IIS with a Microsoft SQL Server backend.
Meta Description: [ TalkSpread Message Board System is a powerful internet and intranet based tool for robust communication among people with common interests, sharing ideas, discussing problems, and negotiating solutions whether they are professional, general, or social. ]

Techno Trade Web Based Message Board - Simple CGI-based messaging. Includes option to ban bad words. Site does not work in Netscape 3 or 4.

Vintage Threads - Free script for traditional threaded forums with no emoticons and no registration.

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