forum owners

I lurked at many adult boards and still do with out registering ..

I register when I feel like it .. it hate boards that dont let you even read the posts before you register

Don't make them register to view posts if you want your forum to grow. You might want to start out where anonymous can even post, and then see how it goes. If you have too many problems, you can always turn off anonymous posting.

Using vBulletin you can also set it up so that certain forums allow anonymous people post, and others don't. That way your regulars can get away from the anonymous people if they want to on certain forums.

I'm using phpbb right now. I'm getting alot of views, not too many registrations and few posts. It's new yeah, just sucks in teh beginning.

give away prizes for registering

anon viewing...
reg posting....

phpBB vs vBulletin

whats the major diff's between the 2?

i know phpbb is free, is vbulletin?

say what?

Man, I am shocked the shit hasn't hit the fan for you pimping another forum on GFY.

didn't know that was bad, figured it was ok since it's just a humor site

vBulletin costs money. I don't know the difference between the two scripts, but most high traffic forums that I see use vB, so there must be something that makes it worth paying for.

It's a lot more difficult to start a fora than it was a couple of years ago, when the web communities were just starting after the failure of the USENET newsgroups. Back then, you just needed a copy of Matt Wright's WWWBoard and a couple of postings into the newsgroup that you were offering relief from the SPAM flood and you were set!

Nowadays, it seems you have to have a gimmack to jump start everything. One way to do it is to offer some sort of incentive, such as prizes, to get people to register and start posting. At first, you should have the forums completely open to the public and, once they're going properly, close some of the forums to general view. You never want to close all forums though, they'll wither and die.

The idea is, which I've successfully used, is that the casual surfer can see that the forums are active and get a taste of what's happening, but the good stuff is denied them (think along the lines of a tour to a paysite). With available mods for some message boards, you can actually choose the level of guest viewing, where they can see the topic titles and number of replies but can't access the meat of the thread. That's the best arrangement!