Online "community" means different things to different people. To some folks, it's an online chat session. To others, it's discussion forums and newsgroups. Some people think you need interactive features to create a community. To others, community means connecting with people through e-mail newsletters.

Ultimately, though, community is not about technology. It's about emotions. After all, successful magazines create community without any real interactivity at all. They do it by identifying or creating a group with a common bond or interest, and they becoming the gathering place for that group. The same process holds true for Web sites.

Sure, there are plenty of technological solutions for adding features to your site, but they simply won't do the job unless you can inspire enough people to care about your subject. Successful online communities flourish where people share a common interest, no matter how good or bad the enabling technology.

There are several forms of community that can be added to a Web site. In ascending order of the effort required to maintain and monitor them, they are:

• A blog
• A message board
• A chatroom

Each of these will add freshness, content, and page inventory to your site, but they will also add maintenance time and inevitable headaches if not closely monitored. Implement them with caution.

If you want to build a community around your site, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have the passion for your topic that will attract others? (If you don't care too much about it, nobody else will, either.)
• Can you attract enough people interested in the topic to form an active community? (If your target group is too small, you may not be able to gather a critical mass.)
• Is your topic appropriate for group participation? (Look for real-world examples of people getting together to discuss the topic. If you don't see any, you may be in the wrong area.)
• Can you make the commitment to support your community with personal attention? (Building a community requires a human, hands-on approach. You can't expect other people to do it all on their own.)

If you can answer "yes" to these questions, then it's time to think about the technology required to build your community. And don't worry too much about which solution you choose. The best online communities often flourish in spite of the technology, not because of it.