Give the users plenty control to design their templates, code their profiles, etc.. there's nothing worse than being completely limited when trying to express urself. Also, it might be a good idea to reward high posters and commenters somehow... to promote more posting, it might take a while for it to get rolling so you'll have to do what you gotta do at first. Good luck!

What do think about posting too many threads though? Do you think that if you are posting and no one is responding, it might send a message that you as the owner are trying to get things going, but it's not working? (Just thinking about the worse case scenario here.)

I think it would be a good idea to ask a few of your friends to join and respond to your discussions or get new ones going -- sometimes all it takes it a few replies to get a thread going.

I do think if you start too many, that you will look like that. But if you get several other friends or top responders start some threads it will diversify things a bit.

Get on social media sites, like Twitter. Build up your social contacts, preferably within your forum's niche. Then let them all know what you are writing about, topics they can discuss on the forums, etc. Anything to perk their interest. If some of my contacts on Twitter did the same, I would be happy to join in and start some discussions.

The fastest way to announce your site and get some fast sign ups I think is, To use google adwords to just get the name out there instantly,Then start your link building.

I think what you can do right now, besides what has already been mentioned here, is really foster the conversations that are already active. Do all that you can to show that you are committed to your forum and that the discussions are engaging and courteous. I think that's a big motivator for people to contribute. If you keep your threads clean and focused, then people won't be as shy opening up.

If you want traffic to your forum, then firstly people should really know about your forum. For tht participate in some other forums related to your topic, and let the members know about your forum. Advertise your forum on other sites & forums. in the sense... banner advertising. Join social networking and bookmarking sites and add friends.. let em know about your site as well.

Also google adsense is a good way to get traffic to your site. That's it... i can suggest friend.

Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to have at least 3 or 4 reliable members that you know will probably respond to all of your new threads. If they're people you know, great, if their people who naturally want to be active, even better.

The thing is that when a new thread sits for too long, I think it's easy for people not to respond it. At least compared to a thread that has immediate responses, even if they are only few.

It's a hard thing, I've been working on a blog for about two years, and just now am I starting to get substantial blog views, and most of it is from Google searches. Not social networks, I don't even bother with those, the people I'm targeting will find my, or your, website, the others that you manage to pull in wont be as good visitors that actually search for what you're talking about, so they can contribute, and attract more people.

I think it is an important example to hear about a blog owner who worked for two years before starting to get some serious traffic from Google.

We can do lots fo things to attract traffic to our sites, but a few high rankings in Google can be life changing. Try to increase the reputation of your site so more people will link to it, but also spend a lot of time creating new content. Even if nobody is visiting the site to read the content, Google will visit your sites and index the content. Each new post/thread you start is a potential link on Google that could climb the rankings and bring future traffic.