To make an active forum, you need a source of traffic. And to get a source of traffic, you need to give a particular demographic of users a reason to come to your forum.

An easy way to make a midly active forum is to create a fan forum for some type of media or another. That way you have your demographic picked out-other people who like the same song/movie/book that you like. If you're the only site out there, people will come to you because they have no choice if they want to discuss the work, and once you get a few fans, more fans will see that and will come, and it'll keep building as much as it can.

When creating a forum, avoid the following:

1) Bad site design. You might not be a graphic design god, but don't put music and little flashing gifs and ads everywhere so you look like a spam site. It's ok if your site is simple, and even a bit awkward, so long as its not annoying. Bad site design will make your users jump ship as soon as someone else doing the same thing with a decent or better site design comes along.

2) Poor moderation. Unless you are a huge site with a never-ending poster source, having poor moderation will chase the posters that could make or break your forum away. By "poor moderation" I mean either non-existant moderation (anyone can post anything, which usually means vulgar or spammy or stupid things get posted), inconsistant rules (you punish one person for one thing, but don't punish the other person when they do it: this makes posters unhappy that you're not being fair), or over-zealous moderation (banning someone for a single typo).

3) Nuking the board. Sometimes you might need to reinstall the board from time to time, but the more times you wipe the board so everyone has to re-register, the more likly you are to lose your posters.

And when creating the board, do the following:

1) If you're a fan board, see if the original creator of the work you're being fannish about will link to you. Be polite about it. If they do, you'll get traffic from the original site. This works quite well in book fandom.

2) Advertise discreetly. DON'T post ads on other people's boards-this is rude-but do put links in your profiles. If people like you, they'll check out your profile, and might make their way to your site.

3) Post interesting topics. Nobody will come talk on your board if there's no real topics anywhere. People tend to be consumers, not makers...if you sit down and write a post to get discussion going they'll contribute, but far fewer people will make posts themselves unless they feel very comfortable on your board or are the outgoing type.

4) Try to keep the good posters you have. Treat them well. Good posters-ones that drive the forum and keep things turning over-are worth their weight in gold. They lessen the burden of you having to keep posting yourself, and are an attractant to new posters.

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