-Personally, I'd that having it so that the total posts and replies on the main page is the better way, then hidden. -Little bit bigger member/login/profile images. (they are a tad small)
I don't think there is anything wrong with offering incentives. Sure, focusing on building quality traffic is important. But an incentive can sometimes motivate a ton of people to return to your site on a regular basis. Since your market is webmasters, perhaps you can offer free ad space on the home page for a week or so for winners of the contest. Exposure is what a lot of webmasters need. I think people will more likely trust free ad space more than a $2,000 contest because the winner will be clearly known since they'll be featured on the site. You'll need to do some testing to know for sure.
thanks for all the constuctive critism, i really appreciate it. for stats the site has over 1150 posts now which aint bad considering 1100 of them have been posted in the last 3 days. maybe the images are a little small, but i will leave these for a while, ive only just had them made. i will be adding more contests and referal programs to the site to try and bring in the members. i,ve also paid for a sticky post on namepros, anyone else no any webmaster sites that allow paid stick posts. or advertising? i,m also targeting this site via google adwords using there site tragetted feature, dont no if i have set it up right as i cant see my ads on this site anywhere. has anyone else got any advertising methods i could use? or no of? thanks steve