An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions and posting user generated content, 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, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards (but see also dial-up bulletin boards), fora (the Latin plural) or simply forums.