I would like to know how you feel about FWM? Give the good and the bad....How do we stack up against other small sites?

I think its on the border of good and great (I'm leaning towards the great part). There are a lot of inactive accounts. Is there a way you can send them emails saying "we noticed you havent posted in awile, stop in and check out whats new on FWM!" or something to that nature.

I have done that Mike the only thing I can do is send them emails and wait for them to come check us out!

Whats the best way to get people to join?

Keep our forum url in signatures...I am constantly updating on google and yahoo to get us more towards the top. The more people post here the more the search engines recognize us. Ask people you chat with or on other forums to join. I have a few forums we are affiliating with or have our banner on...The more people we get out name to the better. Posting constantly will help so members and visitors have new material to read etc. Articles and profiles really help!

I'm right there with you Mike, in the good to great department.

The forum is mostly stable (new post bug almost made me miss this thread tho) we're slowly getting more people, which is nice. Not sure what else can be done at this point.

With such a small user base, I have to wonder why you decided to open another forum tho. We don't get that much traffic as it is, doesn't seem like a good idea to split it out so much.

I just get tired of the same things at the "larger forums" all the same questions all the moderation of you can't say this you can't do that. My goal is to have a forum where people can go and not get jumped on for asking questions and such. I opened the other forum just for people to talk about Cichlids...In the last few years of fish keeping Cichlids have been getting more popular among hobbyists. If it don't do so well I haven't lost anything. Gives users another new place to go when they get tired of the big bang sites!

I chose fair.. I think it needs alot more work. The main thing that should be worked on is the appearance, make it more user friendly. The colors theme does not go.
Make it more user friendly in appearance then you can worry about making it user friendly info wise. Get a few "smart" folks to post a few informative articles/posts/threads/journals that will make ppl want to check out the board. If thats missing then you really have a small chance of getting this board going since hey no offense but people like the big boards due to their stability and knowing that their questions will be answered within minutes, that there are not just 20-30 other members to share info with but few hundred thousand...

Also just a hint... some forums might have a problem with you adding another fish forum link in your signature.

Either way good luck..
Ill be lurking around seeing how things go

-Bk

Well, thanks for your input. The people who host the forum are constantly working to make the forums better. They are currently working on making it to where you can choose a skin that fits each users liking. This will make it more user friendly. The forum is less than a year old and there are only fourty members but we do have some dedicated members and most posts are answered very quickly. There are some very experienced members here already as well.

I am always open to suggestions from my members and if you ask around most of the members will be happy to tell the same. I do need some more reading material and articles....that will hopefully come soon. I visit the big forums on a regular. I think there is something more special about the members of a smaller forum though. Any suggestions or questions you may have post away don't be afraid of the PM either.
As far as adding a link in the signature, I don't care if you want to do so go ahead, as long as you arent posting banners.