Here is my opinion for what its worth ;D
1) a forum will flop unless you have decent traffic, this one hardly has enough.
2) start the forum off small.....with maybe 3 or 4 sections and let it grow over time. People will request extra boards when required, its whats happened here. The thing with doing it like this is, you end up with boards your memebers want, not ONES you think they want!
3) For a forum only site to take off, i reckon you need about 5,000 page views per day. Your lucky if 1-5%% of people actually post on any given day, most are happy to read.
4) branch out!.....I've created a link index, and added some articles, news and a chat room. All get used and bring heaps of visitors from search engines except the chat room which is a total flop. Again overall traffic could be the issue here, or could it be that our members are members because they like the forum and couldnt give a [censored] about chat? dunno....