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Well first off, I'd say change the layout of your forums. From a user standpoint, it just all seems a bit to cluttered to me, and I find that a lot of people tend to prefer a wider interface. The home page for whoyoureppin also seems to be a bit too ad-oriented. The goal should be to make the entire website flow together naturally.
Secondly, I think that it'd be a good idea to go and take a look at allhiphop.com. I always feel that it's a good idea to take a look at the premier competition in order to help myself become better.
There are too many forum sections in whoyoureppin. Try to generalize the topics a bit and when you feel as if there is enough talk about a subject for it to call for its own section, then you can think about doing that. For now though, try to generalize the sections, fuse some of them together, and make it, overall, more user friendly.
As far as advertisements go, I find that banner ads seem to work to a certain extent right above the fold. This way advertisers know that they're getting a good spot on your board and that they will receive some good recognition. As for text advertisements, I'd say that those usually work when they're in the actual topics themselves. Like after every 1st and last post on a page, there's a text advertisement. When it comes to placement, however, it's all about testing and seeing how things work together. But before worrying about advertisements, I'd look into improving the layout of the website, because as I said, it seems to be a bit cluttered and cramped.
For the sake of interest you might want to gather the latest hip hop news, every now and then, and write an article summing it up, placing your opinion, and/or asking for user opinion. Try to do something unique that will attract user interaction.
As for MicForum, I see no reason why you can't allow that to grow with the success of whoyoureppin. I think that you should promote the concept of battling on WhYRe (or WYR) and allow MicForum to be the official battleground. Ofcourse you should allow for written battles to proceed on the home site (WhYRe) but in the case that someone wants to personally express the emotion and flow that they intended, they would have the privilege of using the MicForum.
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