Hi together!
As being active in the german VdS section and the respective forum I highly appreciate that ARAS found the way to such a medium (and even the same tool phpBB). According to our experience in Germany our foum is highly successfull. After more than five years of activity we already have some experience and I want to share it with by giving some recommendations. These main recommendations focus mainly on an easy access, uncomplicated use and a design so that newbies feel invited to participate (more than three necessary "klicks" and a newby goes away). In addition, our forum tries to deliver solutions for different user preferences (forum/mailing list).
1.) A "Last Posts List" right on top is very helpful - It should be visible without additional action. That is highly appreciated by all users.
2.) Connect the forum to the mailing list - Very early we discovered that many users prefer a mailing list so that the forum does not need to be opened. Especially the professionals prefer that. For that reason and after a lot of controverse discussion (convenience for a everybody) we connected the forum to a respective mailing list and address. By using a specific mailing address (e.g., technique ->
fg-spek-tech@vdsastro.de) the message is automatically added to the forum thread. The same vice versa. By choice, each forum contribution can be sent to the personal mailing address by a respective subscription.
3.) Carefully consider the different sections and do not "double" them. Our six sections (see
http://spektroskopieforum.vdsastro.de/) are widely considered to be quite reasonable and we never found a reason to change them (but see4.). For instance, you have the sections "Current Campaigns", "Spectra, results, information on activity ..." and "What are you observing tonight ?". We cover them all in one single section plus sub-sections.
4.) Do not consider your forum structure to be established forever but regularly keep a discussion alive. Some weeks after our forum start we added the section "Windows/Linux and so on" and later an online UNIX lesson because of respective suggestions from the users.
5.) Congratulations for the pure English design! With respect to the small spectroscopic community I really appreciate that and you do a better job here then the VdS forum. Even if some users are not familiar with English, there are tools to circumnavigate the problem (Google translator as Robin mentioned). The benefit beats the (artificial) risk to "loose" colleagues. And Robin is a great example that it works.
I hope my input helps a bit.
Cheers et a bientot, Thomas