Zoho Discussions Review - General Features & Requirements

|
Previous Page 1 of 4 Next
Web Site: http://discussions.zoho.com/
Download here: Download Zoho Discussions
Community Forum: Support
Released under: Proprietary License.
Current version: Hosted (December, 2009).
Sponsored By: Zoho Corp.
Price: Free for Free Edition, $12 for Basic Edition, $25 for Standard Edition and $75 for Professional Edition.

Zoho Discussions is one of the huge list of services provided by Zoho.com company. Even if this company holds an important list of different web applications, focus has clearly been put on the Zoho Discussions softwares, that is clearly a really modern and ergonomic application.

You will discover in this review that AJAX and Web 2.0 common features have met for the real time bulletin boards, and that fusion is called Zoho Discussions.

Please note that features that are not available on Free Edition are put as Plugin in the review. Those features could be enabled by using a Basic, Standard, Professional or Custom Edition of Zoho Discussions.

Pricing Details

Pricing

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
No.
Web Server Details
Web servers host the forum software.
No.
Languages Details
Development language.
No.
Databases Details
Systems that store forum datas.
No.
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers Details
List of compatible browsers.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3
  • Mozilla Firefox 2
  • Mozilla Firefox 1
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Konqueror
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Chrome
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
Required Plugins/Technologies Details
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
  • HTML and Javascript
  • HTML and AJAX
Localization Details
Languages supported by Zoho Discussions.
Yes Yes.
  • English
  • Chinese
  • Japanese

The hosted architecture does not force us to know and consider the technologies used behind the scene. This is an advantage for beginners.

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat/Threaded
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
No.
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
Yes Yes
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
  • Sub Sections
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
Yes Yes
Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
Unknown Unknown
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
No No
Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
Yes Yes
Posts
Post Editing Form Details
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • WYSIWYG Editor
  • Formatting Buttons
  • Preview Button
Emoticons Details Yes Yes
Post Editing Format Details
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • HTML
  • BBCode
Attachments Details
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Yes Yes
Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Yes Yes Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
Yes Yes
Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
Yes Yes

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
  • Portal
  • Website Home Page
  • Bug Tracker
Users List Details
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Yes Yes
Private Messages Details
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Yes Yes Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Yes Yes
Instant Messaging Details
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
Plugin Plugin Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
Yes Yes
Calendar Details No No Remote Control Details
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Poll Creation Details No No Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
Yes Yes
RSS/Atom Syndication Details
New posts and threads available using aggregators Syndicate
RSS 2.0
 
 
Next page: