Groups vrs Forums

Hi - I am having trouble sorting out the difference between groups and forums, and when it is appropriate to use them- they seem to be rather weirdly integrated.  Do most people use both one or the other, or both at the same time?  Here are some comments from a thread on Expertzzz- any thoughts or insights on this would be appreciated:

Rob

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I'm trying to figure out what he differences are between blogs, forums, and groups. Yes, they all seem somewhat similar, but I don't really understand the 'real' differences. Like, why use one and not the other? Do most people use one, some, or all?
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Well I have a handle on Blogs, I think- but I could use some insight into the differences between Groups and Forums as well.  How are they supposed to be related?
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Well, the blog is someone's own journal posting but the Groups and Forums are almost the same. The only difference I can see is that Groups comes with Dolphin and Forums is the Orca software (which costs more money to buy the license.)
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So would it make sense to just use Groups and disable Orca entirely?  What does Orca give you that groups don't - and vice versa.  I'm still trying to get a handle on the pro's and con's of each- where they complement each other and where their functions overlap, etc.  

The group forums use orca too, so you'll still be using an orca forum. Groups are for members in a community that have a shared interest. Lets say that you have a dating site, and some of your members are into bondage. If one of them makes a private group, they can share photos and communicate with eachother, without pushing their lifestyle on the rest of the community.

John, thank you for this clarification.  I think on considering this, it seems to me that it would be a bad idea to use groups when you are just starting a community, and you might fragment your community.  In any event, I don't think forums and groups are very well integrated.  I was adding a new "group" to my forums and I expected that this would also be a new "group" in my groups.  Personally, I wish this all happened from the profile.  When a person registered they could pick their groups, which would also be forums, and these would also be "tags" for the member's profile.  Anyway- thinking out loud sort of, I just know that right now I don't like the way the forums and groups are integrated with Dolphin.

Rob

Hi,

I find the simplest way to look at it is this -

Forums are the primary forum for all members of your community. Its for everyone. And its the first thing I would set up for the comunity - good for stuff that affects everyone such as general, supprt chat etc. And for some sites with highly specific purposes it is possibly all you will need.

Groups are places where people can split off into other smaller groups if needed.

For example if you had a site on surfing in a certain area you may just want one forum. But if your site was surfing all over the world, you may have lots of groups, each dedicated to their own individual areas.

Cheers

Max