Following the documentation available at 
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/join.html
t1    t2
----  ----
a b   a c
---   ---
1 x   2 z
2 y   3 w


            Then a natural left join would product these results

mysql> SELECT * FROM t1 NATURAL LEFT JOIN t2;
+------+------+------+
| a    | b    | c    |
+------+------+------+
|    1 | x    | NULL |
|    2 | y    | z    |
+------+------+------+
A Left join would produce these results)
(Row1 is included but 3 is leftout because it doesnt have a corresponding row 
in t1)
mysql> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON (t1.a = t2.a);
+------+------+------+------+
| a    | b    | a    | c    |
+------+------+------+------+
|    1 | x    | NULL | NULL |
|    2 | y    |    2 | z    |
+------+------+------+------+
(Row1 is included but 3 is leftout because it doesnt have a corresponding row 
in t1)

Your query
SELECT forums.id , COUNT( forum_msg.id ) AS cnt
FROM forums
LEFT JOIN forum_msg ON forums.id = forum_msg.forum_id
 ORDER BY forums.sorder ASC

assuming you have the data

Forums f     Forum_msg fm
f.id    f.cnt   fm.id      fm.cnt
-------------  -----------------
1       1  2     2           2
2       2  3     3

YIELDS these results
---------------------------
if.id   f.cnt   fm.id fm.cnt
------ -----   ------ -------
1      1        NULL 0
2      2        2       2

Martin Gainty
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> Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:09:04 +0300
> From: mat...@itlegion.ru
> To: mysql@lists.mysql.com
> Subject: Left join does not work with Count() as expected
> 
> I have two simple tables. One - list of forums, second - list of 
> messages and i want to
> get the list of forums with number of messages in each.
> 
> Here is the query:
> 
> SELECT forums.id , COUNT( forum_msg.id ) AS cnt
> FROM forums
> LEFT JOIN forum_msg ON forums.id = forum_msg.forum_id
> ORDER BY forums.sorder ASC
> 
> The problem is that if  a forum does not have any messages then the line
> with such forums.id does not appear at all.
> 
> If i delete COUNT( forum_msg.id ) AS cnt from Select  - i get all forums,
> as expected. If  i leave the count() as shown - i get only forums with 
> messages
> in the result. As far as i can remember it was not like this before. I 
> am running
> 5.1.3
> 
> --
> Artem Kuchin
> 
> -- 
> MySQL General Mailing List
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