Nothing creates a happier user base than mandatory fees. Just my advice.
There's nothing mandatory about offering a donate feature on the forum to complement the sell off of ad space like this forum does (which is also optional by the way).This forum did very well as I can see myself using that method, so I figured I'd adapt this, to my forum to get things moving along.Payment is never mandatory on my forum and it never will be.
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Or are you suggesting some kind of membership fee?