>Any ideas and suggestions will be much appreciated

Take a look at yahoo groups.

As an administrator, you'll have to sign up for a yahoo account to use it - Other's don't.

My other tip - As a yahoo group admin I would force users to at least sign up for the 'daily digest' which is an email summary of group postings. This will drive traffic to the forum once people see threads that interest them.

If you'd like to see a sample, my group is here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vache_vancouver

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada