I have looked at many of your boards and most of them are doing quite well. How do you get members to join? Is it just because your forums have been opened for a long time? I will get around 15 guests a day, but only on occassion will someone register. Maybe I just need some good affiliation. Please give me your thoughts or ideas on this.

Content is king!

Having your board connected with a web site that has a lot of information on your subject matter will bring members to your board.

If doing a full blown web site is not feasible then you need to create that sort of information on your community. Invite knowledgeable people on the subject to your board and try to get them involved. If that doesn't work register several names for yourself and post, post, post.

Well to get people to join I firstly make the board look appealing design wise and get some close people I know to start posting there. Once thats started I just go advertise and the members roll in.

Steve when you say "content is king", what exactly do you mean by that?

Is it you're trying to say some topics will pull in a lot more people than others, or is it that in order to attract large numbers of members, your boards need to be different looking and/or active constantly?

I ask this because although I run a board that's the busiest of all the topics ON the message boards we have, I'm always looking to increase volume to both my board, and the boards in general...

Any suggestions for what boards are really popular? or what topics?

All help welcome!

B4N - Tigerwolf

http://stormchat.com (the friendliest place on the web )

I was speaking of reference information. New visitors will find your community either by word of mouth or search engines. To get visitors from either you usually need to have a lot of useful information posted on your web site or board.

A good example, even though it doesn't UBB, is AVSForums.com. They became super popular because they have a lot of knowledgeable people on their boards and they all posted a lot of detailed information.

I don't feel boards necessarily need to look different. That's just my personal opinion. But I think most agree the board should look active to encourage others to stick around.