Here's a fantastic resource for forum/community management I found...

http://www.feverbee.com/2012/02/how-to-build-an-online-community.html

About two hundred articles this guy has written about how to manage an online community and keep it active, and there's some pretty good advice there.

I think my favourite comment from there sums up whether a community is active or not in one line:

"If your community gets no contributions in a 24 hour period/whole day (except on Christmas Day), your community is on the brink of failure"

Now admittedly, it's not all good advice. But I do think it's a useful resource for people who want things like 20 topic ideas or something similar, and it does say a lot about how to promote one properly.

 

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

The "Four Fundamentals" article pretty much summarizes my support forum.