How do you keep your forum active during holidays and summertime?

I notice that sometimes forums lag a little during holidays and in the nicest weather when more people are outside. Do you have any tips on how to keep things active during those times? For holidays I do not worry so much as I would rather see people spending time with their family than hanging around my forum.

 

Just keep on adding content and advertise. While the activity is not always the same, you can surely keep the community active enough to not take such a huge hit during those days,

 

I just keep up the same as well. For holidays, I don't focus on it too much because like you said, I'm perfectly fine with regulars being away and visiting with their family. For summertime, it's a little different. I often get a different surge of people (like ones searching for summer-related topics, teachers and students who are out of school and wouldn't be there otherwise, etc). I just try to make sure I'm providing content to make sure they want to keep coming back. Contests can pull some people in, too.

 

I continue to add new content, and also, I continue to reply to the on-going threads that are going on. My community is usually a lot more active during the holidays and summer-time. I believe as long as you don't let up - by this, I mean, you don't stop working just because more users are posting, because it helps your community in the long run.

And if I feel like it, a contest or two might go off in the summer-time because how we have more users active during these times.

As long as your community is going strong during the other times, then I don't see why your community wouldn't continue to be active during holidays and summer-time months. You set the example of your community by being active and interacting with the users. If you don't do this while your community is going through those times, then you should have staff members who work on the community daily - adding new content, and such. More users tend to be on during the summer-time and holidays because students are off from school, so I don't see why a community can't strive during those times.

 

No problem. It's not the same weather everywhere. For example when in South Africa is winter in Europe is summer. And when there is Chinese New Year in China and Vietnam, in Europe is just, for example, February.
And sure, you can keep posting by yourself - AUTARKY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky

 

All you have to do is keep track of the months, its not hard to keep a forum active, the key is keeping the members happy. It's great to have members from all across the globe interacting with one another, and heck, you could possibly branch into those countries if those members from overseas have some friends.