excellent local forum idea!
:D Nice new forum - very impressed. I thought I'd share a couple of things that have helped me in the various message boards I've run. somewhere like - 'general chat' type stuff I've found useful and if you have too many sub forums before you have many members - that can put people off! I've just moved our forum at www.fosm.org.uk from phpbb to phpbb plus - a more content management system which allows people to share pictures, files, etc... which i think would be great for a lowton forum... good luck and let me know if i can help in anyway... I know how hard it can be to get these things off the ground. Nice one.