[karlm]

I use a few addons from here to make the forum appealing. Yet, this doesnt' seem to attract new users.
My site is geared towards men's rights (e.g. dads being blocked from seeing kids for no good reason, feminism man-bashing but woman-bashing isn't allowed, etc.) and so, tends to attract only a few folks. Men's rights isn't something the general public consciensly think about often, until they're the one getting messed with by the government. So, some come in just to vent and quickly vanish once they've been offered 4 hrs a month with their child/ren, while others are seriously fed up of the way society is heading and so they are the keepers - the ones that return daily with headlines & new campaigns.

I'm in the process of splitting my forum up - so it uses different skins for different sections. Hopefully giving the impression of entirely different content per sub-forum. I have adsense on all pages (aside from register and other none-relevent pages) and offer a 1yr subscription of ad-free viewing by using user-group permissions to display/hide the ads.

I think the thing that makes my site unique - as others have agreed seems to be the key, is that when an opposing voice comes to my forum, they are not silenced or banned on site. If an MRA (men's rights activist) goes to a pro-feminist board, they tend to instantly ban or silence the MRA so he leaves without being able to voice his opinions... whereas, feminists are welcome to discuss any subject on my board.

I try to keep it all above the belt and pleasant, and so most folks will self-moderate (language wise).

I will say though, that for the first few months - I was about the only active person aside from a very limited pool of members. I enabled guest posting to 'entice' new members and just made sure I replied to as many posts as I could in order to keep the flow.

Nowadays, I can leave the forum only an hour or two and have several new posts. I guess I'm collecting about 1 member every 2days, most are lurkers looking for the links (that have been blocked to guests and search engines).

Anyway, I hope my waffle was helpful