What features got your community going?

[subnet_rx]

Message boards? Chat? Events? I've even saw the guestbook on some sites have more messages than anything else. Free for All links are sometimes worthwhile. What were you successful with?

Right along with that, what kind of timeframe did it take to get your community going?

[mahke]

Forums, and hosting forums within my own for official band sites, which helped bring in about 80% of my user base. And they, in turn, bring in other fans, suggest other bandsites to offer forums to, etc etc.

My users rock

[mjames]

Message boards. I haven't been able to hold a real successful chat event yet.

[Dontom]

I started my community one year ago - now its the largest mountainbike-related forum in Germany
How: I e-mailed many other webmasters having mtb-sites about running a forum together, because everyone had their own empty forum ;-) If they joined my forum they would get special rights etc...
I dont have an own mtb-homepage anymore only forums!
it worked!

Tom

[pgowder]

Definately UBB. This really caused the site to expand. The latest thing I've added that is really taking off is ImageFolio. This allows users to upload thier own pictures into galleries.

http://www.powwows.com/cgi-bin/if/imageFolio.cgi

I've also create a few php/mysql databases that people are really enjoying.