What is the difference between moderated and unmoderated forums?
In a moderated forum, the contribution posted by one of your forum members isn't immediately visible to all the forum's members. Instead, the forum moderator is notified of the new contribution and can check to see if the content conforms to whatever guidelines you define on what can be posted. The moderator then decided whether to make the post visible, withdraw it, or to ask the contributor to revise it.

In unmoderated forums, anything goes!

Can having Community really help my business?
It depends on what your business is about of course. If you sell common commodities or services which are well known and understood by you customer base - probably no. Similarly, if your customers are not particularly into using computers - no, but also why are you spending money on a web site at all!.

Community works where your products or services lend themselves to discussion and experience sharing, such as a Boat Charter company using a forum for customers to share their trip experiences and a noticeboard to give up-to-date information on place weather and things to see. Another good example is a bookshop using a noticeboard to give details of forthcoming publications, and providing forums for readers to share their book choices and form book-discussion circles. For products, a specialist food retailer, such as an organic food supplier, can use a forum to create recipie circle for customers to share ideas for cooking unusual or old variety vegetables and grains.

Do forums work?
They work as well as you and your customers want them to. You need to keep the content interesting by regularly seeding new items for discussion, promote good usage by not allowing discussion to become too rambling, discourage people from using forums for entirely personal discussions, and set-up a noticeboard for useful advice originating from a forum discussion so its easy to find.