Some words about SEO Forum

Establishing and maintaining an SEO forum calls for a good deal of commitment and perseverance. You cannot expect a gush of traffic in the start itself. In the initial phases of growth, you will be the whole and sole caretaker of the forum.
When you go for open source software, check for the advanced versions with add-on features. It requires painstaking efforts to implement and organize the whole project. Paying attention to some key entities earn better results.
Make the page of the forum user-friendly. The appearance and design of the page should be pleasing to the user and navigation should not be confusing. Add features like forwarding options, automatic login, notifications via e-mail etc.
Your forum should be reliable and lively to obtain active participants. Create the topics yourself and push your way to the web audience. Try your best to sound the topics interesting, which is a nice way of attracting audience.
I suggest keeping the forum well relevant and related to your domain of interest. From my observations, I have also found that “a few topics full of relevant posts” will find more users than numerous topics and, sometimes, subtopics with sparsely distributed posts. By this way, you will be targeting a specific audience who has got limited interests; but here, the traffic is more likely to turn to conversion rates.
As mentioned earlier, you have to pay attention to most of the functional aspects. Whoever posts a topic, it should not be a pure repetition or resemblance of another. As the forum owner, it is your responsibility to check the authenticity of each post. See to it that the participants follow the rules and regulations of the forum.
Keep the forum active by your active participation. Encourage creative and thought-provoking questions from the users and allow them to participate in all the forum activities. Incentives to the active users and options to rate the suggestions are some of the tricks to keep the forum interesting to them.
Nowadays, people often opt for forums with good reputation for want of solid evidence. Page rankings obviously show the power and authenticity of such forums. Competing with such sites is a real Herculean task. Information given in the forums ought to keep accuracy. Promptness in getting replies will make the visitors stick to your site. Based on a few experiences, some users may give misleading information about the subject. To build the trust of the users, ensure that your forum gives only reliable information. Tangible proof has to be presented which substantiates the suggestions.
The forum is supposed to be an arena to share the valuable experiences of the members. Make it a healthy and interactive discussion wherein the users can utilize suggestions and advices from the group members. Let the users of the forum speak for you.