How long after opening did your forum begin to thrive?

[BBNZowner]

How long did it take your forums to really pick up and become self sustaining (i.e community becomes established)?

Obviously it would depend on your circumstances (how much promotion you've done, the topic of your forum, etc), but I'm just curious. Also any strategies on turning lurkers into members would be apppreciated (I've naturally done the generic stuff suggested online, but it hasn't really changed anything), or any tips for new forum owners.

[New Joe]

Some of mine never took off, one actually took off well, but this was a special forum and the only of its kind in the country its in...

Content is what it is all about, plenty of it.
Never give up, keep posting even if it's just you, lurkers will read and read then one day maybe register.

Have a nice skin, and a few good features from modifications from here.

[Max Taxable]

I'll add to what Joe said: DON'T OVERMOD IT!

Don't overmod it and don't overdress it with massive images.

SPEED is what cuts it on the web, people will LEAVE if the site doesn't load snappy.

[ZUCCO]

Mine has like 3 months and still dead

I will put more time to make it a little bit popular

[BBNZowner]

Like others I think I'm feeling the burn of trying to compete with facebook, groups with even more specific topics or interests than my forum seem to get so many members in comparison. Less high quality posts, however.

[Lionel]

I used to be with UBB and 1000 members in 2001 then I switched to vb and a month later I had 10,000 new members thus my love for vBulletin. Now I have 30,000 members. Unfortunately I neglected that forum to focus on another one.

[forums4windows]

Like others have said, there is a variety of on-page SEO stuff you can do to ensure your forum is as optimized as much as it can be, but also off-page optimization is the key to driving traffic to your site - don't discount Facebook, twitter et al - embrace them as a way to promote your site and get your name out there (of course these shouldn't be your only means of backlinking). I'm in a similar position where I have a relatively new site, which has been worked on for a while and now we are starting the off-page stuff to drive traffic.