Launching a forum

[inspireme]

I have had a forum on www.bigfreeguide.com/camping for years, i never did much with it because i know you need lots of visitors to make them work. I regularly have 200ish visitors online now, but no posts... so i was wondering what steps others made to kick start a community forum

Other similar, less busy sites, on the same niche as mine are getting loads of posts... maybe its the forum software i use (miniBB) but i actually like that... its nice and simple.

[Warz]

I also use minibb and I have no posts other than my own I actually think that's a huge reason... If only indexu would work with phpbb or vbulletin I would change (and im not paying for amember).

[inspireme]

minibb is a great forum, maybe people are just too unfamiliar with seeing it... i have some some huge miniBB forums though.

[dePaulus]

Inspireme & warz, have any of you ever had any security issues with minibb?
It looks like a niffty discussion board and the price seems pretty reasonable but am curious about how secure it is (against abuse)

[Bruceper]

To get users interested you must have posts on the forum. Just like a directory no one wants to be the only one there.

So you need to have content and conversations that are current. There are a few companies who you can pay to "seed" a forum with posts. I've never used them but they do exist.

A good design also helps of course, with clear rules about limits and possibly incentives as well (giveaways and such).

[inspireme]

Inspireme & warz, have any of you ever had any security issues with minibb?
It looks like a niffty discussion board and the price seems pretty reasonable but am curious about how secure it is (against abuse)

its easy to integrate, and never had any security problems (in 3 years) i integrated phpBB and it was hacked within a month so i moved onto something else.

I tried paid forum boosting. Its strange, i get the visitors visiting the forum pages, nobody posts though. I guess maybe a competition would be the way to go.