This is copied from what I wrote for exco. I hope it helps you some.
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The more forums you have guest viewable the more likely you will be able to get new members. The more that guests can read the longer guests will be inclined to stick around and have a look at the forum. They will still have to register in order to post a reply to a topic if you set the post permissions as such but they are also more likely to register if they can see what type of community you are trying to create. A totally closed board tends to turn me off because there is no way that I can know if I would find any reason to be there in the first place but I do believe that some forums ought to be kept private for members only. This is especially true when people are posting about personal issues and wanting feedback or advice. Sometimes a person might reveal too much identifying info which could have serious repercussions. On one of my boards, a woman once posted her birth date, place of birth, parents names, and some other identifying info. With what she posted, a certain type of person could steal her identity and make off with the entire contents of all her bank acct.
I also believe that on most boards there SHOULD be a way to contact admin even if someone is not registered properly. There are several different options available to you to choose from. You might want to have an open forum where anyone can post and leave messages about registration difficulties. You might choose to create an email address that is clearly visible to anyone who comes to the board or another option might be to use a shout box or something that allows anyone to post. Some email spam filters will reject email from many message boards . . . not just exco. I once registered multiple times at a pro board and never got my confirmation email because my ISP considered emails from pro boards to be spam while still letting in all the real spam. So new or prospective members need to know that before they register, they need to put exco@excoboard.com into their email address book especially if using an email address that has spam filters. And they need to be told up front that only valid email addresses will get a confirmation email. It is in the TOS agreement that they probably didn't read. Exco does not sell email addresses so they don't really need to be worried about registering promoting spam but if they are worried they can use an alternate email that is easily created for such things as registering for boards and such. I don't use the same email for my friends and business accounts as I use for registering at a clip art site or a store site or anything that I know will promote spam. If they use an invalid address, if something happens like forgetting a password, they have no way of retrieving it from exco. At this time, there is no way for you as an owner of the board to reset that forgotten password so they will have to re-register if they don't have a valid email.
Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar Count!If someone goes to your board and can't understand the category or forum information because you are too lazy to use proper spelling and grammar they will also in most cases be unwilling to register and become an active member. Please remember that because of the Internet, people for whom English might be their second or third language do not understand your misspellings or slang but they do want to interact outside of their local community. To someone who did grow up speaking English much of cyberspeak is also a mystery. I got a phone call from the hospital chaplain who asked me to interpret an email that he received from someone. He has been using computers, email and the Internet for years and is fluent in several languages but he didn't know what things meant in this email that he received because cyberspeech is not a language he is totally familiar with. His email was full of LOL, IMHO, LMAO, DIL, DH, and other common cyberspeak. And the poor guy didn't have a clue as to what it all meant.
How do I promote my site? Search engine informationMeta Tags GeneratorsMETA Tags are hidden text placed in the HEAD section of your HTML page that are used by most major search engines to index your site based on your keywords and descriptions. It is very important to use good META Tags with good keywords as well as a good TITLE if you expect to be found in most search engines. Note that META Tags are not the only thing search engines will look at when ranking your sites; and, also some search engines will ignore META Tags completely. Most search engines will also index your body text. Meta Tags Generators which you can find by googling are supposed to help you choose the best words for search engines to find you. Before you start looking for a META Tag Generator, it would be a good idea to search on several search engines for sites similar to yours. See which sites pop up on the first few listed sites and carefully pick out the words that were used in the description of that site.
I just threw the word "fun" into 3 big search engines and got basically the same results on all 3 searches . . .
Results 1 - 10 of about 42,630,000 for fun. Let's see what happens when I add forum to the word "fun"
Results 1 - 10 of about 11,900,000 for fun forums Now let's try "fun messageboard"
Results 1 - 10 of about 4,040,000 for fun messageboard. I am overwhelmed by the sheer numbers so let me change my search to a specific subject. I am going to look for "Tennis" ( The reason that I am using tennis is because I don't remember anyone posting about that subject here at Support to recruit members.)
Results 1 - 10 of about 119,000,000 for Tennis Again the numbers overwhelm me. I might look at several pages of results but you can be sure that I wont look at all the results.
So we see that keywords are what you need to make META tags and without good ones your META tags are basically worthless. Think about how you searched for some of the last few things you searched for. What kinds of words did you use in that search? Did you find what you were looking for or did you have to refine your search?
I found some good solid advice and/or info on several pages that helped me learn about META tags. Some places you might want to look are
www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/faq.html ,
www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/ ,
search-engines-web.com/ ,
www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/ , and read the info at some of the META tag generator sites. Many of them are actually sites that want you to pay them for good keywords but they do have some free information that could help you to choose better words.
One other thing that I found interesting was that several places said that redirects put you further down in the search engine listings so it might not really be worth it to get that shorter link. I also learned that it might be as long as 6 months before Google pays attn to your board or site because so many people start out like a comet at first and then let the site die.
Here is a little detailed break down of Google's most important ranking factors. Some of these may or may not be actual ranking factors and some may not be significant as I am not sure if my source is correct and I actually do not understand what all this really means anyway.
1) Content a- Keyword in Title Tag
b- Keyword in regular text
c- Keyword toward top section of the page
d- Keyword in Heading Tags H1, H2, H3
e- Keyword in links
f- Keyword in image file names
g- Keyword in Meta Tags
h- Keyword in Alt Tags
i- Keyword in comments
2) Links a- Total number of incoming links
b- Links from high PR sites or authorative sites
c- On-topic Links
d- Having Keywords in the anchor text of incoming links
f- Having keywords in internal links within the site and menues
g- Age of the incoming links (Currently links less than 3-6 months old, may not even get counted)
h- One-way links may get more credit than 2-way or recprical Links
i - Links coming from pages with less outgoing links are better. Links coming from pages with over 100 links are no good.
3) Factors that may count against you a- Too much keyword repetition
b- Hidden content via text same color as background or CSS or other such methods
c- Javascript Redirects or certain other redirects
d- Cross linking bunch of sites to eac other in the same network
e- Doorway pages. Pages that are specifically written for search engines and cannot be found by your site visitors via your normal navifation menues.
f- PPC (Porn/Pills/Casino) : Adult, Pharmacy and Casino related content
g- Duplicate content : watch out for those duplicate filters. Make sure your site doesn't have content from other sites or no one else has copied you.
h- Age of your domain. Brand new or less than 6-month old domains may be in the Google Sandbox
i- Participating in Link Farms or services that try to artificially increase your links by doing shortcuts
j- Cloaking : Showing a page to search engines different than what the users see based on their IP address (i.e. redirects)
WebringsWebrings may a good way for you to go as well because then you will have lots of ingoing and outgoing links on hopefully active sites.
Word of MouthThis has been proven to be the most effective advertising ploy ever. You might actually advertise your board or site in as many local papers or bulletin boards that are available to you. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and promote your site that way as well. For those of you still in school, ask the school newspaper if you can write an article about the subject of your board. There are many non-internet ways of advertising that have little or no cost. (One good way would be to tell that aunt or uncle who can't seem to keep their mouth shut about anything. They will need to brag about you to everyone they know)
Also register on other boards that have a similar theme to yours and make sure that you put the link in your profile and sig if allowed. Don't put down the other board by comparing it to yours but when there is good reason, invite others to check out your board. Saying "plez join mi bord" is not the way to promote your site. When you join that other board, make a nice introduction of yourself listing age, gender, country, interests, etc. Then while you are telling about how wonderful you are and how interesting your hobbies are, mention that you like exchanging ideas with others who have the same intersets and you set up a messageboard of your own. Tell them that you enjoy getting feedback about your site and that they would be welcome to take a look or even join if the mood strikes them. . . . NOTE: This is why it is good to have several open forums!
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theres too many good grafix boards already. I cant think of any other type of board to do really. ive got a few cos i couldnt think up of wat to do 
ive got a gaming and anime one but thats kinda not working 
