This took me about two days to setup. Wasn't hard, but I'm somewhat familiar to IPB already! http://homeautoforum.com How do you guys usually get members?
Getting members to forums is all about content. Starting a forum nowadays is way harder than before. With competition such as Facebook, Instagram and so on, grabbing an audience can be complicated. The best and most long-lasting way to do this is creating original content which then ends up being passed on or back linked due to its good quality. This will certainly help you grow steadily over time to something worth the effort. You will have to keep at it for a while even if it might seem like you are going nowhere, getting an active userbase in a forum shouldn't be taken lightly. I would also suggest using a theme that fits more the purpose of your forum. Having a dark theme on a forum related to your home might not attract certain users which are not that computer savvy.
My site was getting DDoS'ed last night, and the forum locked itself down by chancing the .htaccess -- All is good now.
You might want to strengthen that site with security services like putting a web application firewall in front of your server. Forum sites tend to attract bot attacks. On another note, consistently putting up interesting content is important when starting a forum, you have to be the one to drive conversations. Welcome every new member and engage with every new thread so people can see that your forum is active/ looks like it has an active community.