So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and i need recommendations on what features i can add to increase user engagement and returning/active users, basically, recommendations should be something uncommon and unique and from personal preference or experience, thanks :)

Edit: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...

So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and I need recommendations on how to make the experience for the members more engaging so that more of the membership will return, and become more active. To date, we have not seen the level of activity from current members that we'd like.

I would especially appreciate interesting ideas that folks have seen work in other communities that perhaps might not be a common best practice.

More background: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...

So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and i need recommendations on what features i can add to increase user engagement and returning/active users, basically recommendations should be something uncommon and unique and from personal preference or experience, thanks :)

Edit: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...

So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and i need recommendations on what features i can add to increase user engagement and returning/active users, basically, recommendations should be something uncommon and unique and from personal preference or experience, thanks :)

Edit: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...

So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and i need recommendations on what features i can add to increase user engagement and returning/active users, basically recommendations should be something uncommon and unique and from personal preference or experience, thanks :)

Edit: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...

Also guests can view all topics in the forums (but cannot reply to threads) how can we make them register and participate in the community too? we have made a system where only logged(registered) users can see some contents e.g codes etc to encourage user contribution..

So, I'm building a science and tech forum website and i need recommendations on what features i can add to increase user engagement and returning/active users, basically recommendations should be something uncommon and unique and from personal preference or experience, thanks :)

Edit: Someone asked for more info on my intended community. Okay, so it's basically going to be a science and tech forum community coded from scratch by us (I'm not using any forum software), we already had it online since last year but it's still on beta version presently, and we currently do not have a good level of engagement/activities from users (i'll blame that on the uncompleted version of our forum community), so we will be finishing up our forum community hopefully ending this month, any ideas on what we can implement on the site to make our tech community stand out from others and be more social and engaging, attracting more users thus growing the community will be very much appreciated.. We do have unique contents i.e tutorials, guides etc

My question: How do we make users: both male and female engaged to our community, our community is focused on science and technology and we plan to have a sub domain where we can blog about science and tech stuffs too i.e blog.example.com...