Let everyone read your forums. Hiding them makes it much more difficult to get new members. Reading the content and seeing that it is a lively community are the two of the biggest reasons new members sign up. Hiding your community takes this all away.

I came to ask the same question! so if the forum is not active, is it good to hide it from guests and allow only registered users to browse it? untill we get more posts and members?
another concern is, does that affect search engines? if I allow only registered users to read, does that have any influence on search engines?
thank you.

1) Hiding content makes it harder to sell your forum. If your forum is slow promote it, don't hide it.

2) Hiding it prevents search engines from indexing it making it more difficult to promote.

Don't hide your forums!!! Want more members? Promote it! Make it more exciting. Run contests. Put your last 10 posts on your site's home page. Post in related forums and use your signature. Post in related blogs. Do anything but hide it.

I am a lurker before I decide whether a forum is worth my time to register. There are just so many forums out there nowadays, and it's so easy to set up a forum. It's what you do once it's set up that makes it special, and that's what we prospective members want to see. Not that you know how to run an install.php file.

Here's some information about how we got started = http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/faq.php?faq=daniweb_faq

there is no way your telling me you spent months posting different topics and got no replies to them.

I did and I was persistent and I didn't give up and eventually it all became worthwhile.

I am a lurker before I decide whether a forum is worth my time to register. There are just so many forums out there nowadays, and it's so easy to set up a forum. It's what you do once it's set up that makes it special, and that's what we prospective members want to see. Not that you know how to run an install.php file.

Exactly. Most people setup a forum that is about everything and expect to be as big as OffTopic.com is without even trying. People do not post just to post. They want to feel part of the community and want to have others to talk to. Throwing up a forum without pushing any kind of activity will never get the forum active. it's a lot of hard work starting a forum up and getting it active.

> I just think it must just look silly after abit having topics with no replies to them.
That's why it's up to you to seed your forum with interesting topics and questions that people feel an urge to reply to.

> Also how come TechTalk did not take off? And why did you quit with that site, instead of continuing?
Because I wanted to create other things other than forums and the idea was for DaniWeb to be my umbrella company, with TechTalkForums being one of the properties.