I could probably write a long essay on this topic, but:

People only come if you have useful information. Collect as much info as you can on topics applicable to your forum and post it. If you can't figure out what info to look for, give up - you shouldn't be trying to run a forum in the first place.

People only come if they can find you in search engines. Submit yourself to all the major search engines, and make sure that the title for each page contains at least your site name and the post topic. The most important search engines are:

http://www.google.com (powers most other site searches as well)
http://search.yahoo.com
http://search.msn.com
http://www.ask.com (you have to be linked to from a site ask.com already spiders, you can't request that you be spidered)

People only come if your forum is clean and safe. Registration with email verification is a must, and some form of graphical verification is probably a good idea as well. Plus you'll need to visit the forum fairly often. If you can't do this, forget the forum idea.

In reply to Re: getting people to my forum by TedPride
in thread getting people to my forum by Anonymous Monk

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