As my website aims to be interactive, I proposed to add a forum so that users could interact with one another. There are many pros and cons to adding a forum onto a website and I found an interesting resource which states what these are:

http://www.chemstudioweb.com/pros-and-cons-for-adding-a-forum-to-website/

I researched into adding a free customizable forum that would relate to the website. It would do this by having topics that relate to what the magazine is about and it will also have consistency with the website through colours so users can see that they are related. The forum will open in a new window, so that if users wish to carry on browsing through the website whilst contributing to the forum this is made easier for them.

 I researched into many forums that were customizable, yet some were very confusing to deal with and didn’t have the freedom that I had hoped for as I could not choose all the colours for the forum. The links shown below are forums which I researched into, yet I did not decide to use either of these as I had to download the software first, and after doing so on a couple found out that they did not quite let me do what I had wished. 

http://www.phpbb.com/

http://www.yabbforum.com/ 

http://www.simplemachines.org/ 

http://www.vbulletin.com/download.php 

I did find a useful website which is shown below and I went through the process of creating a forum with them, however when it came to customizing the forum it was very difficult to change the colours.

http://myfreeforum.org/  

http://helpisathand.myfreeforum.org/

I finally found a relevant website which allowed me to create a forum at ease and with the freedom that I had hoped for. This website is: 

http://www.aceboard.net

This forum was very easy to customize as I could change all the colours to relate to the website which allowed me to keep consistency throughout. As well as this, I split the forums up into separate categories; I had a section for parents, a section for children, and a section for parents and children. This way the users could choose who they would prefer to talk to. I used the navigation of the website to aid my thinking into the sections within these categories, which were development health and nutrition. I also had other forums named Q & A and General which were for those who wanted to contribute to more open discussions. The excellent thing about this forum is that users can also start up a new topic; therefore this gives them the freedom to discuss what they want if we do not already provide this.  

As I am the administrator of the forum, at any time I can change the look and feel and also add further topics within it. As well as this if users do not adhere to the terms and conditions on the website I can moderate any posts and delete users if I feel the need. I included a welcome message to this forum. There are still a few things I would like to change on the forum; however the link below shows how this forum is working at the moment:

 http://helpisathand.aceboard.com