Your index could be a whole lot better if it didn't appear so empty. Meaning. On your sidebar you have a Recent Threads, Poll & Stats which pushes the length of the page. Yet you only have one news article. Add some more articles, publish them with interesting size proportionate images and you have just made your index page look full. A full look gives the visitor the feeling of "I wonder what's inside".

The forum is dead. However, your forums themselves and the overall setup I would say give you potential in the event you start driving traffic. I would suggest incorporating an eBook/Tutorial and some other form of Downloads to help you obtain that traffic via Katz and elsewhere.

You seem to have a professional manner about yourself, so good luck with your site.