Ad-hoc forums are useful if you want to enable users to comment on pages or articles, but don't want to create a forum for each page manually. In case you don't need a structured forum, you can also consider using Message boards for this purpose.
You can create Ad-hoc forums by means of the Forum (Single forum - General) web part.
If you place the Forum (Single forum - General) web part to a page and set its Forum name property to ad-hoc forum (or ad_hoc_forum if you are using ASPX templates), the system displays the new forum on the website. However, the forum will actually be created only when a visitor adds the first post to the forum. After that, the system will add the forum to the AdHoc forum group available in the Forums application.
Ad-hoc forums are uniquely identified by the page they belong to.
Deprecated forum web parts
The following two web parts are deprecated. Do not use them when developing new websites. They are available to ensure backward compatibility with versions prior to 4.0:
- Forum (Single forum - Flat layout) - this web part ensures backward compatibility with the former Forum thread list web part.
- Forum (Single forum - Tree layout) - this web part ensures backward compatibility with the former Forum tree web part.