attracting people to my forum

[merdok]

I've got a website which at present is little more than a forum, sooner or later I am going to add other things to it however I want to build a good following first.

I get a lot of visitors every day and I know people go on the forums but for some reason people dont log in or post things.

Any idea how I can attract people to post and start talking because I'm out of ideas.

[Dudley]

Tell us your website for a start, then we can comment.

[Phantaxus]

you could change your forum so people have to log in to access it - but that could people off altogether

[rojash]

A forum is a bit like a party where no-one knows anyone. At first everyone is a little shy of posting comments etc. Once you get a few people posting interesting stuff the thing will tend to snowball.
One way of getting the ball rolling is to start a few topics yourself (preferably under pseudonyms). Try to imagine what topics are likely to run for a while, and make sure there are a few provocative ones.
Think about the first edition of a new magazine. They always have letters on the readers' letters page, even though they've never had any readers!
Ease of use is also important. We used to have a fairly active forum on a charity site that I run. When the (free) hosting company that we used went out of business, taking all our postings with it, we switched to another system, and it's never recovered - partly, I'm sure, because it's less intuitive to use.

[merdok]

my website address is

www.fr-es.co.uk 

its actually been going for a while now, it just seems that the proverbial ball doesnt roll anywhere!