Forum Ideas, Take it or leave it either way

From the last forum i helped manage we had a very good catagorized forum to help make things easier to look for and to look at certain things. Such as catagories as

Appearance
Performance
Troubleshooting
suspension chassis
general discussion
how to tutorial sticky
car audio video security
general auto discussion
non automotive

it just seems the catagories are not detailed enough and everything is just thrown in together and you got to sort through it all just to follow up on another members progress or ride. also a few things that may be usefull is,

a store link in the nav bar to purchase hostile logos and products

car of the month picture and recognition on front page

hell even get us a chatroom to talk in when users are actually on

a link in the nav bar to certain other related websites like best stores to buy from etc...

here is a different forum on which i used to visit frequently for a look of what i am talking about on the categories. www.v6z24.com im not trying to down talk the admins or designers or anything, the forum is a good forum im just trying to put my part in and throw out ideas when i can.

Those are some good ideas and that is the reasons why I posted this section up. I wanted to get some ideas on what to add, and what to take out. I tried to start the ride of the month idea, it didn't take. Most of the time us admins are busy as hell doing a lot of other things, but i do from time to time look at other forums and see what we could add to make it better. I will definitely be looking into adding some new things and possibly taking out a thing or two this summer. Thanks for the input.

If you or anyone else have any other ideas post them up and we will look at how we can incorporate it into our forum.

Also i know you probably like the forum where it is but this website http://www.punbb-hosting.com/ makes great forums for free and they have a lot of variety and add ons for free including an extremely nice chatroom, instant messaging, and a lot of forum page options. Including a forum store to purchase logos and your hoodies and a pay now that can be sent straight to the treasurers banking account (if you have one) i quckly put together a forum on punbb so you can get an idea of the categorizing and the chatroom feature. im not saying we need to switch im just showing categorizing and the chatroom. The webstore link is something i quickly threw together on the other forum and it can be completely relevant to the hostile car site and products. if you do not want them to purchase over internet or into the treasurers account then contact information on where to get and purchase can be provided.
http://www.punbb-hosting.com/forums/HostileCars/index.php

If you dont have a treasurer it would be a good idea to have someone for finances such as member donations for picnics, meet and greets, trips, parts, logos, Do events to raise some money to help show appreciation to the members to buy them a shirt, cheap set of wrenches, even something small. or a monthly member fee of $5, $10 or $25 etc.. to help pay for certain outings to keep things fresh and new.

Right on man, I will look more into that and have a discussion with the other admins and owner.