The forum is nice, however a newer forum should not have this many forums. I would eliminate and combine forums so you are around 10 or less forums at this point. You can add on more forums as you get bigger.

Ok, good idea...i'll look into what I can combine.

Anybody have any ideas on what things that should be combined?

Ok, I have made some changes....

I have combined Html/CSS with the PHP/Mysql forums...

I also combined the advertising & promotion forums with the network room forum

Combined the Visual Basic, qbasic, etc. forum with the c, c++, c# forum

I removed the current events & Debate forum

Are these all good things to have done? Or should some come back?

Also any other ones that should cut out?

I think you might combine Entertainment, Humor and Chit-chat...I think it's better to gather some volume of posts under a common section then split it when needed

Ok, i'll look into combining those together.

I'll probably at least combine Entertainment & Humor together for the time being as those two can easily be combined...

And I'll think about combining the chit chat in with that.

I agree, I see there's still a lot of programming forums - so what about combining all of them and when the community is even bigger, you'd bring them back?

Seconding this idea -- I think 18 forums is a bit much for a new discussion board. What I like about small forums is you can pretty much keep tabs on every thread -- but it's too much work when there's so many forums to check through (i'd get rid of your sub-forums for now, too).

Yes, once a forum gets so popular, you have to start splitting stuff up, but when it's small you may as well bring as much stuff as you can together. Right now everything seems a bit "barren" and far away.

Plus, you don't really know what users will have a need for when it does grow. You may as well start small and create forums where there is a demand for them. Simply having a supply won't make them any more popular.

Ok, I have gotten rid of all of the sub-forums.

Are there any other forums that should be combined, deleted, etc?

This is how I would combine the forums. I see this as a temporary move until the forum gets going, so I would save all of your current forum names and descriptions to use later when you expand the forums.

18 forums condensed into 10:

News & Announcements
----Site News
----Bugs & Suggestions
General Discussion
----Entertainment & Humor (Jokes, Random Internet Findings, etc)
----Chit Chat: {{Chit-Chat}} + {{Introductions (make it into a thread)}}
----Free Stuff: {{Free Web Templates}} + {{Free Software}} + {{Other/Random Free Stuff}}
Programming and Web Design
----General Programming Discussion (News, Random Questions, Discussion)
----Web Programming Help Forum {{HTMS/CSS/Javascript/PHP/MySQL}} + {{Graphics Design}}
----Application Programming Help Forum {{Visual Basic, C#, C, C++, etc.}}
----Web Design Forum: {{Web Hosting}} + {{Search Engine Optimization}} + {{Advertising, Promotion & Networking}}
----Website Showcase (show your finished product): {{Website Showcase}} + Critiques

Notes:
-Graphics design may or may not have to be its own thread.\
-I don't know where {{Forum software}} + {{Blogging software/services}} would fit. Maybe into Web Design? Maybe as a sub-forum? Maybe just remove them for now and leave them to general chat?

Maybe someone else has some input? This is what I would do. I'm not sure if it's intuitive or not... I guess just use this as a suggestion and apply it however you wish... Some of the thread names I made up are bad, you might want to shorten them down or just make them sound better.

Well I was definitely thinking about combining the free stuff forums all into one forum, so i'll probably get on doing that.

Edit, I have made some changes to how the forums are laid out, combined some things, and so on. How are they looking now?