My two cents for you would be to not have any deadlines. Work on it when you can and feel like. Build it slow and steady without expecting to be at the same stage as any well established system right away. I don't know how forum systems like phpBB was started out, but I know that alot of big projects starts out with one guy, then people finds the project interesting and joins up, that way they are slowly building a development team. If I had time I would help you out, but as for now I've only got time for my own project and my family. I registered on you forum and did some looking around, and I really liked what I saw. Tons of potential, and I would agree with PaulRyan, it would really be a shame watching you just throw all that hard work away