how do you get members when starting a new board?
 

anyone have any suggestions? besides spaming other forums...

Having some interesting content helps, as well as some decent members that will contribute daily. RSS feeds help in a small way to get some related material to your site, but generally you need some good content that will make members come to you.

Plus things that will keep members there and coming back, an Arcade, Downloads and perhaps a chat room sometimes helps

You'll never get members on an empty forum or one with no content

Good Luck ;)

thanks! but how do you get a few members to get a little content?

Well i guess your gonna have to add some yourself, Surely you must have friends or associates that would join your forum and post some content??

Are you a member of any similar forums? Perhaps they'll let you have your site in your sig???

You could also exchange links with other sites and even join a topsite to get your backlinks up to date.

Good Luck ;)

ask your friends

put out biz cards

i know you said don't say it, but ima say it, post at related sites with a link in your signature.

Swap links with other forums too.

i do have friends but none that use forums... so :/

then i guess you'll have to join up other similar forums and carefully put the word out, email the admin and ask if members could review your site.

But like i said before you need to add content to your site and possibly add something that other sites don't have or use, you need to make other similar forum users join you and the only real way of doing that is if they get something for it.

Have you looked at a download section for your site??

You need to make it so that guest can view your forum, if your showing nothing then what is going to motivate members to join

Good luck

depends on what kind of forum you have... i take it you're talking about the metalvsrap forum, pretty easy and straightforward:

1) create a decent index page (using some cms).
2) post some interesting news topics like the latest things talked about on mtv
3) make sure the user you post these with has a funny/meaningful avatar
4) make sure these posts show up on your index page, with a picture to support the news.
5) the most important part: get on all famous community pages (facebook, myspace, hi5) and tell everybody about it.
6) search for everything that fits your criteria and look for some forums that work, learn from them but don't copy, get the news before they do (relevent to the topic) and post with a funny/cool username on their forums a thread saying: did you guys hear about the latest news on... and link to your forum's thread.

good luck...

Brilliant :D