With forums the most important phrase to remember is “nothing draws a crowd like a crowdâ€. It is kind of a catch 22, you have to have active posters to attract active posters. So what is the solution? - Make a few fake accounts and actively post on each - Pay a few posters to be active (can find some fairly cheep here on DP) - Get your friends to be active - Off some sort of reward to increase activity and sign ups - this will not offer long lasting members, but may get you over the hump of getting started. Good Luck!
paying those posters isn't a bad idea. i myself join lots of forums that has this point systems and thru it they'll earn and i will definitely allow them to have links for their signature. some forums don't allow this.. and users don;t appreciate it.
Yes, allowing links in the signature is important. People will join forums and start posting quality posts (some will be spam) to get their link out! But once your site gets established and there is a good base, I would set it up to where you need to have a certain amount of post before the link is allowed. This will help prevent massive amounts of spam!
What I do for my forum is hide links but show everything else, for example: http://www.symbiangalaxy.org/symbian-os-9-1-9-2-9-3-applications/108754-media-players.html
I allow links after 3 posts, simply because otherwise you get people who are only interested in free advertising, rather than actually contributing.
Ive owned alot of different forums and i think the only real way to get active members is to offer information/advice that may be differcult to get elsewhere and is actually needed