What is Zoho Discussions?
When you look at Zoho Discussions at Zoho website, you see that Zoho Discussions is a small entry 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
(and supports smaller communities perfectly as well.)
Client Requirements
The hosted architecture does not force us to know and consider the technologies used behind the scene. This is an advantage for beginners.
Compatibility with Smartphones |
Compatible SmartPhones
Compatible Cellphone Brands and Manufacturers.
|
No. |
Application Distribution / Type
How it is distributed / App Store Availability
|
No. |
Forum Threads & Posts
Forum Threads / Topics |
Forum Style
|
Flat/Threaded |
Forum Organization
|
- Forum Categories
- Sub Sections
|
Thread Icons
|
Yes |
Topic Tags
|
- |
Hot Topics
|
- |
Unread Topics
|
Yes |
Hidden Topics
|
Yes |
Sticky Threads
|
Yes |
Related Threads
|
- |
Detect Duplicate Threads
|
No |
Announcements
|
- |
|
Posting Messages / Answers |
Message Editing Form
How to Post Messages.
|
- WYSIWYG Editor
- Formatting Buttons
- Preview Button
|
Post Editing Format
Supported Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
|
|
Spell Checker
Checks typos on posts and topics.
|
- |
Image Attachment
How Images can be Attached and Displayed in Message Posts.
|
No. |
Embedded Videos
Videos and Media Websites Supported in Message Posts.
|
No. |
Additional & Technical Features
Additional Forum Features |
Poll Creation
|
No |
Private Messages
Users Can Communicate using an Internal Messaging System.
|
Yes |
Instant Messaging
Discuss with Visitors and Members in a Chat Window.
|
Plugin |
Calendar
Topic, Member Birthdays, Events are available from the perspective of a calendar.
|
No |
Online Users List
Connected User List (Often Found in the Forum Footer).
|
Yes |
Members List
Search and Consult the List of Members.
|
Yes |
Technical Features |
Bundled Software
Additional Software Available with the Forum.
|
- Portal
- Website Home Page
- Bug Tracker
|
RSS/Atom Syndication
Posts and Threads Exported to Feeds Aggregators  .
|
No. |
Friendly URLs
URLs are clear and contain information about the topic (title, message,...).
Highly recommended for SEO purposes.
|
Yes |
Post by Email
Post Directly From your Email Box.
|
- |
Remote Control
Remote Control from External Software/Websites.
|
No. |
Cache System
Cache pages to optimize bandwidth and load times.
|
Yes |
Template Engine
It is easier to theme a forum using a known template engine (more docs & examples,...).
|
No. |
User Profiles & Options
Some details about Zoho Discussions features regarding members.
Member Options & Features |
Bookmark Threads
User Profiles Keep a List of Followed Posts and Topics.
|
Yes |
Email Notifications
Receive Emails When New Messages are Posted in Followed Threads.
|
Yes |
Export private messages
Private Messages can be Downloaded by Users.
|
Yes |
Payment Subscriptions
Paying Membership Subscription.
|
No |
User Profiles |
User Profile
User Information and Settings.
|
Yes |
Avatars
Pictures of Members, Useful to Easily Identify their Posts.
|
Yes |
Signature
Signatures Added at the Bottom of Each Message.
|
Yes |
Ranks
Tags and Labels Identifying the Members, based on specific criteria (Total Posts Count, Credits, Moderation Level...)
|
Plugin |
Moderation & Users Management
Moderation & Threads Management |
Moderation
|
No. |
Moderator per section
|
Yes |
Global Moderator
|
Yes |
Move Threads
Move Threads from Topics
|
Yes |
Shadow Topics
When a thread is moved, the previous position is kept in order to inform users of this modification.
|
Yes |
Close/Lock Threads
Close/Lock Problematic Threads
|
Yes |
Users Management |
User Groups
Organize and define groups of users, and apply different actions and settings on them.
Common Groups: Guests, Members, Moderators, Administrators,...
|
Yes |
User Registration
|
No. |
Limit Features For New Users
Features are limited if a user has created a small number of posts.
|
- |
Guest Posting
|
No |
Multiple Administrators
|
Yes |
Send Warnings to Users
Inform users by email or PM that they infringe the board rules, and could be excluded for such behavior.
|
No |
Forum/Section Restricted Access
ACL could be use to determine if a user or a group of users can access (in read only, post message) to some sections
and topics.
|
Yes |
User Banishment
|
Yes |
Administration & Support
Database Management |
Backup Database
Backup forum datas that you could store somewhere else.
|
No |
Prune Database
Remove old and unused datas from your forum.
|
No |
Restore Database
Restore a backup of your database if the previous install crashed.
|
No |
Installation & Upgrading |
Installation Method
How this forum software could be installed.
|
|
Upgrading Method
How this forum software could be upgraded.
|
|
Updates Notifications
The Admin Panel informs you when a new version is released.
|
No |
Forum Migration
Convert an existing forum to Zoho Discussions.
|
-.
|
Security & Spam Protection
Security & Spam Protection |
CAPTCHA
Captcha protects your forum against spam bots.
e.g.,
|
Yes
|
Abnormal Behavior Detection
Detect users or request strange behaviors, and try to process proactive actions.
|
- |
Words Filtering
Offensing Words are automatically replaced.
|
No |
User Blacklist
Prevent specific user accounts to register (based on email address, name,...) and disable potentially harmful members.
|
Yes |
IP Blocking
Prevent access to spam robots and other scripts that could attempt
DDOS or Brute Force attacks on your forum.
|
No |
Customization & Social Networks
Customization |
Plugins
Add new features to your forum installation.
|
No.
|
Themes
Modify the style of your forum easily.
|
Yes.
|
Custom BBCodes
|
No |
Smiley Packs
|
- |
Custom Thread Icons
|
No |
Additional User Profile Fields
Ask more about your members with custom fields.
|
No |
Integration with Applications, Social Networks, Intranet... |
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
|
No. |
CMS / Blog Bridges
Integration with existing Web publishing tools.
|
No. |
User Accounts Integration
Do users be able to log in with their corporate, Google, Facebook,... accounts?
|
Google Accounts Google Apps Yahoo
|
Content Aggregation
Forum allows to integrate news and content from other website,
using an aggregation protocol (RSS, RDF, Atom,...).
|
No. |
W3C Norms & Accessibility
Norms & Accessibility |
HTML / XHTML Markup
|
XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Click to see if it respects HTML norms.
|
CSS Stylesheets
|
CSS 2.
Click to see if it respects CSS norms.
|
Accessibility (WAI)
Web Accessibility ensures that the forum is usable by people of all abilities and disabilities.
|
Conformance to AA level.
|
UTF-8 Support
Default encoding used to support all locales and countries.
|
Yes |
Conformance to W3C Norms
Does Zoho Discussions correctly follow (X)HTML and CSS norms?
|
Yes. |
Nothing special to tell, instead that Zoho Discussions respects the norms, that is more and more common now, and that's a good news.
Unique Features
Key points and major differences that make Zoho Discussions unique:
- Good usage of AJAX
- Tags are really useful to organize and helps users to find what they need.
- Creation of new topics, that are classified by Discussion, Idea, Problem Reporting, Question Asking and Announcement are really good to help the user to organize his posts.
Final Words
Great!
Zoho Discussions literally makes us rediscovering forum softwares. It was a real pleasure to discover and see how each features and advanced tips have been integrated in the general user interface.
Of course, as usual with hosted forum solutions, you do not have any controls on your datas, and the datas of your community. That's the price of exporting infrastructure to the Web cloud. Indeed, when we are talking about services, it generally means commercial services, that signify that for advanced usage, you will have to pay something for what you need. Fortunately, prices that Zoho offers are quite good and are valid against their competitors.
The navigation is really efficient and easy. The usage of AJAX replaces tons of useless pages by simple popups and dynamic reloading of some parts of the page. Moreover, it gives the feeling that the forum is much more fast than any classic forum software. No doubt on this, this forum software has been really well designed. To conclude, Zoho Discussions makes the bulletin boards entering to the Web 2.0 world.
Additional Resources:
Comments (1)
I used Zoho Discussions as a
I used Zoho Discussions as a university-level educator for 4 months from September to December in 2010. It was very user friendly overall and I'd give it a 7 out of 10.
Good features included being able to identify your message as an idea, discussion, problem, etc., each color-coded with a symbol. It also has a clean look and good overall user experience of entering messages and attaching files and embedding images into posts, etc, nice interface. For the lowest paid plan, you can get 3 forums, public or private, and each has 5 subforums.
The main problem I had was related to my use of it as a PRIVATE CLASSROOM forum (students in my class only). I had to send out invitations for each student and then manually delete students who dropped the course, which became too onerous for classes over 30 students large. I also had to encourage students to make usernames that were actually in line with their student names, since in a classroom you can't be anonymous or use a pseudonym. And they didn't always do this.