accually I think your doing fine petemsc considering you have loads of compitition. Just keep pumping out articles and you’ll get visitors back. I stop in every couple days. One thing i noticed is that you started out with like 20 forums. 20 forums with little posts can look overwhelming to a newbie and looks like your a dead forum. Maybe just use the most active forums and as they grow create more as they are needed. The more focused you are the more focused your visitors will be. I thik i’ll go make a post on your forum 
I know precisely how you feel. One of the most frustrating things in running message boards is when you get a new member you looks to be a big-time regular contributor. He/she comes and posts a lot in the first day or two, or maybe even a week, but then never comes back.
The fact that people post a lot of messages and then never return doesn’t bar me much. What I find far more frusterating is when someone posts an interesting message, gets lots of followup questions, then does not answer those questions. Sometimes the original poster doesn’t return for a while, so the followup questions get burried under the new messages. I have thought about emailing the original poster and informing him of the responses, but have never done it yet.
I AGREE! I have about 250 members and only about 20 actively post, which I feel is a lame number of members posting. Some people will sign up and post like 10 in one day, but then I never see them again. It really bothers me. People just lose intrest and drift away.
I wouldn’t assume that people have drifted away just because they aren’t posting. My discussion forum gets over 1000 visitors per day but averages close to 50 posts per day. A huge number of visitors just lurk around and never post. Some of the lurkers visit several times a day, every day. If you click the “check whose online” button on my forum, you will see that the lurkers usually outnumber the registered users by 10 to 1.
I was unable to access your forum, so I am not sure if you require registration to post. I recommend not requiring users to register. It really discourages new posters.
Thanks for all the advice people, some of this sounds invaluable
Look out world, here comes my forum…
I agree with welcoming new members. I have a small message board I started a few months back, Link Removed and have always tryed to welcome each new member. It does get tough, and other members have emailed me, saying I say it to much. But you got to do what you got to do to make them feel at home.
One thing that is very important, is content.
You can have the greatest board in town, but if there’s no content, your sunk.
My 2 cents of course.
Nice place you got here, time to do some reading. 
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Promotional links removed. Warning is now issued.
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My apologies.