title: Getting the total count of replies for all topics in a forum
body: <p>The database is set up like so:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Forums($id) </li>
  <li>Topics($id,$forum) </li>
  <li>Posts($id,$topic)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Getting the total topic count was easily done by executing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$total_topics = DB::table("topics")-&gt;where("forum", "=", $forum-&gt;id)-&gt;get()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However I'm struggling now to get the total count of posts in a forum. I think joins is the way to go but I'm struggling to get anything working. 
  Are Joins the right way?</p>