[Jaiibee]

Oh wow, a forum I can post in!
Okay, my biggest word of advice is not to do it. At least, not yet.
You see, one area I see a lot of forums fail at is their community, which is quite sad considering their run by community-centered software. When I was apart of a couple of these communities, the administrators had these ideas that they could get their board to be a massive, world-wide, house-hold name and they would have members flock in just to become members, as if it's some sort of honor. The reality is probably the opposite.

If you want to start a gaming community, then I suggest you find yourself a game you thoroughly enjoy, and try make some eFriends over it. I don't really care if it's a guild, or just a group of friends you play with regularly. For example, when I played CSS we never left this one server, and a small group of us became pretty good friends. A history was created etc. and I was able to tap into that with a website I made quite a while ago, but my downfall was that mentality I was talking about before. I tried to make the board something it clearly wasn't, and I lost members.

So my biggest piece of advice to you is to aim small and focus on the members who matter. Your website should not bend-over backwards to attract members, and it should not be created over theoretical growth guides on the internet. Your forum should solely exist for the sheer reason that you love that niche. If you want gaming, get an arcade with good games (have tournaments etc), an image-uploading script so people can upload their in-game success, find mods that relate to your niche and try not to go over-the-top with your theme. An example of a mod relating to your niche; the WoW armory hack, there's a SteamID hack which displays players steamsIDs, you could accomodate xbl user-things , there's heaps.

If you're keen to start developing, do so now, and gradually build up. When you're ready to invite someone, invite 3 other people at the same time, and make sure all four of them are actually going to post. You might not think 5 people is a lot, but it's surely enough. Just try not to treat them as items...

Good luck with it, and most importantly; have fun.

--------------- Added [DATE]1255785238[/DATE] at [TIME]1255785238[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by Trasion

As you start, all you need is yourself. Then start advertising, and just hire the good contributors and helpers.

Hire contributors? Hiring people is not the way you go about creating a successful community. A successful website in the sense that you get a lot of hits, maybe, but a true community, I can't fully see it happening.
Why pay for a +1 on the forum post-count, when you can get proper, hard-earnt posts from members who care about the community?