rogerd - 5:05 pm on Jun 21, 2010 (gmt 0)

Zion, it sounds like you are doing a lot of things right. Here are a few thoughts:

1) During your initial launch, consider not enforcing the limit on pages viewed without registering. Keeping lurkers engaged at this point is important.

2) A thousand posts in 2-3 weeks doesn't sound bad for a new forum. Try to limit the number of initial forums/topics so that it is easy to find the active content and your home page doesn't show a bunch of forums with no activity.

3) Some of the features for rating and promotion of members won't mean much right now. When the community gets busier, these may become more important. Beware of too much clutter.

Do you think your modest signup rate is due to traffic? I.e., is the problem that you are getting a very small number of new visitors, or that nobody is registering?

Here's an oldie-but-goodie discussion of launching a community: [webmasterworld.com...]