forum or forums for a website. Which should I use?

Question

I am planning to have a place on my website for people to discuss things. There they will be able to discuss many topics related to the site's purpose. I am confused how I should call it because many websites use the word forum, and others use forums, but both are places where people can discuss about many things.

According to Wikipedia, "An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages." But I am still unclear whether I should use the plural forums, or the singular forum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum

Some examples that confuse me are
forum.openstreetmap.org
forums.linuxmint.com

Please help with this

GPY · Accepted Answer

If you look at https://www.EnglishForward.com/English/, for example, each of the links points to an individual forum. In all there are about 30 forums. Within each forum are numerous individual discussions, each one called a "thread". If you split your discussion area into major sections like this, each one concerned with a different type of topic, then you collectively call them "forums". If you do not, then you have only one "forum" (singular).

CalifJim · Answer

purplecabbagefanSome examples that confuse me are
forum.openstreetmap.org
forums.linuxmint.com

Please help with this

Consider this. The original name of this site was going to be englishforum.com (singular).

However, as I heard the story, that name had already been taken, so they changed it to englishforums.com (plural).

So sometimes the plural comes into play for reasons completely unrelated to the entity you're trying to name.

It sounds to me like you're planning just one forum, not several separated by topic, so I'd go with 'forum'.

CJ

forum or forums for a website. Which should I use?

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