The barebones definition of a forum is the ability for people to start threads and reply to other people's threads. However, most forum software provides considerably more than this. Most forum software allows more than one forum to be created. These forums are containers for threads started by the community. Depending on the permissions of community members as defined by the board's administrator, they can post replies to existing threads and start new threads as they wish. A forum administrator typically has the ability to edit, delete, move or otherwise modify any thread on the forum. These moderator privileges are often able to be delegated to other forum members. The reasons for having these abilities are often to allow peace to be maintained and the rules to be enforced.
Forum 4.5.3
Beyond the bug fixes, areas that were found to hinder performance in larger installations have been refactored in order to enhance performance. Another primary area of focus was the end user experience, including moderators. In order to accomodate users a move to Ajax has been implemented across the entire module. For those sites that still do not use Ajax, the module will run as expected and the user interface will look almost identical as those sites using Ajax. To accomodate feature requests, several new features have been added such as: Role Avatar support, User Banning, Post Reporting Details, Direct Post Links w/ Anchors, Admin/Moderator/User Control Panels, Per Forum RSS Enable/Disable, Support for Multiple Attachments, Support for Inline Post Image Attachments, Per Forum FROM Notification Email Addresses, More Control Over Email Queue, Subforum Support, Thread Bookmarking, Simpler Notification Management (from a single spot), Support for Limiting Post Edit Period, My Posts Support, Search Keyword Highlighting, New Private Messaging Outbox, Jump to Last Unread Post Support, Ability to view latest threads by time frame and more.
To compare features with previous releases, please visit here.