When times are slow...
 

Well my forums have reached a stage of stagmentation. It's the same ol' posts, same ol' people and there's nothing fresh going on.

What do you normally do when this happens? - it normally happens in my experience between the stage when you jump from a little board to a big board :)

Obviously ideas will vary for each subject-matter of a forum but there are general ideas that can be carried through i'm sure :)

You could always try opening up some sort of user contest. Users love things like that. Competition (when done in the right manner and spirit) will usually wake a site up. ;)

The problem there is that we've been running contests for a while. Our server bills are high and only about 2% of them per year are covered by donations due to the age boundary of our audience. Therefore plumping up the funds for a contest with a real prize is somewhat difficult ;)

The contest could be a hack or site improvement named after them or a thousand other things that don't cost anything. ;)

say u may be shutting down - they all will soon post complaing and hence more topics :)

you could pick a fight with a rival forum (in good fun) cross forum wars

My forums have been in this state for sometime. Last month I finalized my vBulletin 3 style, but style alone isn't enough to satisfy people. I've been meaning to implement some large new features, and have been working on them locally, but haven't had the time to finish them.

Curses. :\

Innovation is what really spurs activity and builds a community. There are so many forums out there nowadays, it's hard to set yourself apart from the rest.

I'm having the same problem, but my board is tiny: 47 members with maybe 7 active members. Very frustrating.

like what?

mines really slow at the moment too, i think it's that time of the year though.

as for yours velo, the problem is that most of the good animes have just finished so everyones looking for the new good stuff.

i think when i move to vb3, i'll be happier but at the moment i'm not confident in my board based on appearence.

Yea I guess the time of the year is a big factor. I mean i'm coming up to getting ready for my end of year exams now and so are a lot of other people :)