1) Put the 5 or 10 latest posts on your site home page. That will show people what is going on in your community and hopefully invite them in. It also helps to keep your homepage fresh.

2) Have conversations with yourself. Dead forums aren't very exciting. Register a few usernames and have conversations with your self as each member. That will help to get your forum started and make it look active.

3) Run contests. People love to win stuff.

What forum software do you use?

Then I have the code you need! You'll be responsible for customizing it yourself but this should do everything you need:

<?
    $phpbbSel = New mysql("SELECT t.*
                                , u.username
                                , u.user_id
                                , u2.username as user2
                                , u2.user_id as id2
                                , p.post_username
                                , p2.post_username AS post_username2
                                , p2.post_time
                                , f.forum_name
                                , f.auth_view
                             FROM phpbb_topics t
                                , phpbb_users u
                                , phpbb_posts p
                                , phpbb_posts p2
                                , phpbb_users u2
                                , phpbb_forums f
                            WHERE t.topic_poster = u.user_id
                              AND p.post_id = t.topic_first_post_id
                              AND p2.post_id = t.topic_last_post_id
                              AND t.forum_id = f.forum_id
                              AND u2.user_id = p2.poster_id
                              AND f.auth_view = 0
                              AND t.forum_id != 19
                         ORDER BY t.topic_last_post_id
                             DESC
                            LIMIT 5");

    if (!$phpbbSel ->getNumRows())
    {
     	echo "There was an error accessing the database. Please try again later.\n";
    }
    else {
        echo '<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" width="100%" class="bbsposts">';
        while ($phpbbFet = $phpbbSel->fetch())
        {
    	    echo '<tr><td colspan="2" class="bbshome"><b>Topic:</b> <a href="/forums/viewtopic.php?t='.$phpbbFet['topic_id'].'">'.htmlspecialchars($phpbbFet['topic_title']).'</a></td><td class="bbshome"><b>Replies:</b> '.$phpbbFet['topic_replies'].'</td></tr>';
            echo '<tr><td class="bbshome"><b>Forum:</b> '.htmlspecialchars($phpbbFet['forum_name']).'</td><td class="bbshome"><b>Poster:</b> '.$phpbbFet['user2'].'</td><td class="bbshome"><b>Updated:</b> '.date("m/d/y",$phpbbFet['post_time']).'</td></tr>';
    	    echo '<tr style="height:2px"><td colspan="3"></td></tr>';
        }
    }
    $submitSel = New mysql ("SELECT username FROM phpbb_users ORDER BY user_id DESC LIMIT 0,5");
    if (!$submitSel ->getNumRows())
    {
     	echo "There was an error accessing the database. Please try again later.\n";
    }
    else
    {
        $i = 0;
	    while ($phpbbFet = $submitSel->fetch())
	    {
	        $newuser[$i] = $phpbbFet['username'];
	        $i++;
	    }
    }
	echo '<tr><td colspan="3" class="bbshome"><b>Welcome to our newest members:</b> ' . $newuser[0].', '.$newuser[1].', and '.$newuser[2].'</td></tr>';
	 echo '</table>';
?>

Just put that where you want in to appear on your homepage. You'll want to style it up with CSS to look good. You can see it in action at the bottom of this page .

BTW, this also includes the names of the last three people to sign up for your community. People love to see their name on websites. :)

I see your forums are your homepage. That code I gave you won't do you much good then. :(

the best thing is ,signup yourself with 8-10 ids and start talking to yourself,you will get fun yourself and other will thing forum is active and sign in and start contest from the first and and post yourself with some ids "wow i got paid thanks admin" people will love it. i did the same.

I think promoting two forums at the same time might be little difficult to manage, I would suggest you to concentrate more on one of them at a time and start a blog of relevant subject that will help you to increase traffic to your forum as well.

the best thing is ,signup yourself with 8-10 ids and start talking to yourself,you will get fun yourself and other will thing forum is active and sign in and start contest from the first and and post yourself with some ids "wow i got paid thanks admin" people will love it. i did the same.

Yeah I have done this before it's quite fun. I haven't tried the money thing though.

It could be better to concentrate on one forum first and scale it to the heights you wish.

stymiee - do you have the same type of code for IPB 2.1.7?

Sorry, just phpBB.

stymiee

regarding the code you posted, how would this work in a joomla article?
and do i need to customize/edit parts of this code to make it work.. if so, please could you explain?

this code seems perfect for me.. thanks :)